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Book__r5lLCX-. 



THE WAR AND UNITY 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

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THE WAR AND UNITY 

BEING LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE 
LOCAL LECTURES SUMMER MEETING OF 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, 1918 



EDITED BY THE REV. 

D. H.S. CRANAGE, Litt.D, 



king's college 



CAMBRIDGE 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1919 



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A 



PREFACE 

For some time past the Local Examinations and 
Lectures Syndicate have arranged a Summer Meeting 
in Cambridge every other year in connexion with the 
Local Lectures. The scheme of study has always in- 
cluded a number of theological lectures, and at the 
last two meetings an attempt has been made to deal 
with some of the religious and moral problems sug- 
gested by the War. In 1916 a course of lectures was 
delivered, and afterwards published by the University 
Press, on The Elements of Pain and Conflict in Human 
Life. In 1918 the Syndicate decided to arrange a 
course on Unity. It was at first suggested that the 
lectures should be confined to the subject of Christian 
Reunion, but it was finally arranged to deal not only 
with Unity between Christian Denominations, but 
with Unity between Classes, Unity in the Empire, 
and Unity between Nations. 

Many of those who attended expressed a strong 
wish that the lectures should be published, and the 
Lecturers and the Syndicate have cordially agreed to 
their request. The central idea of the course is un- 
deniably vital at the present time, and the book is 
now issued in the hope that it may be of some help 
in the period of "reconstruction/* 

D. H. S. Cranage, 

Secretary of the Cambridge University 

Local Lectures. 
November 191 8. 



CONTENTS 

UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN 
DENOMINATIONS 

I. A General View .... page i 

By the Reverend V. H. Stanton, D.D., 
Fellow of Trinity ,College, Regius Professor 
of Divinity. 

II. The Church in the Furnace ... 25 

By the Reverend Eric Milner- White, M.A., 
D.S.O., Fellow and Dean of King's College, 
late Chaplain to the Forces. 

III. The Problem of the English Free 

Churches 51 

By the Reverend W. B. Selbie, M.A. (Oxford 
and Cambridge), Hon. D.D. (Glasgow), Prin- 
cipal of Mansfield College, Oxford. 

IV. The Scottish Problem .... 72 

By the Very Reverend James Cooper, D.D. 
(Aberdeen), Hon. Litt.D. (Dublin), Hon. 
D.C.L. (Durham), V.D., Professor of Ecclesi- 
astical History in the University of Glasgow, 
ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland. 

UNITY BETWEEN CLASSES 

I. By the Right Reverend F. T. Woods, D.D., 

Trinity College, Lord Bishop of Peterborough 89 

II. By the Right Honourable J. R. Clynes, M.P., 

Minister of Food . . . . .115 



viii CONTENTS 



UNITY IN THE EMPIRE 



By F. J. Chamberlain, C.B.E., Assistant 
General Secretary of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association . . . . '137 



UNITY BETWEEN NATIONS 

By the Reverend J. H. B. Masterman, M.A., 
St John's College, Rector of St Mary-le-Bow 
Church, Canon of Coventry, late Professor of 
History in the University of Birmingham . 151 



UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN 
DENOMINATIONS 

I. A GENERAL VIEW 
By the Rev. V. H. Stanton, D.D. 

The governing idea of this early morning course, which 
at the present as at former Summer Meetings is devoted 
to a subject connected with rehgious behef, is this year 
the power that Christianity has, or is fitted to have, to 
unite Christian denominations with one another, and also 
to unite races and nations, and different portions of that 
commonwealth of nations which we call the British 
Empire, and different classes within our own nation. A 
moment's reflection will shew that the question of unity 
between denominations of Christians derives special 
significance from being placed in connexion with all those 
other cases in regard to which the promotion of unity is 
to be considered. If it belongs to the genius of Christianity 
to be a uniting power, it is above all in the sphere of 
professed and organised Christianity, where Christians 
are grouped together as Christians, that its influence in 
producing union should be shewn. If it fails in this here, 
what hope, it may well be asked, can there be that it 
should be effective, when its principles and motives can- 
not be applied with the same directness and force? In 
the very assumption, then, which underlies this whole 
course of lectures, that Christianity can unite men, we 

C.E.L. I 



2 Unity between Christian Denominations 

have a special reason for considering our relations to one 
another as members of Christian bodies, with regard to 
this matter of unity. 

But we are also all of us aware that the divisions 
among Christians are often severely commented on by 
those who refuse to make any definite profession of the 
Christian Religion, and are given by them sometimes as 
a ground of their own position of aloofness. It is true that 
strictures passed on the Christian Religion and its pro- 
fessors for failures in this, as well as in other respects, 
frequently shew little discernment, and are more or less 
unjust. So far as they are made to reflect on Christianity 
itself, allowance is not made for the nature of the human 
material upon which and with which the Christian Faith 
and Divine Grace have to work. And when Christians of 
the present day are treated as if they were to blame for 
them, sufficient account is not taken of the long and 
complex history, and the working of motives, partly good 
as well as bad, through which Christendom has been 
brought to its present divided condition. Still we cannot 
afford to disregard the hindrance to the progress of the 
Christian Faith and Christian Life among men created 
by the existing divisions among Christians. Harm is 
caused by them in another way of which we may be, 
perhaps, less conscious. They bring loss to ourselves indi- 
vidually within the denominations to which we severally 
belong. We should gain incalculably from the strengthen- 
ing of our faith through a wider fellowship with those 
who share it, the greater volume of evidence for the 
reality of spiritual things which would thus be brought 
before us; and from the enrichment of our spiritual 
knowledge and life through closer acquaintance with a 



V. H. Stanton 3 

variety of types of Christian character and experience; 
and not least from that moral training which is to be 
obtained through common action, in proportion to the 
effort that has to be made in order to understand the 
point of view of others, and the suppression of mere 
egoism that is involved. 

These are strong reasons for aiming at Christian unity. 
But further there comes to all of us at this time a power- 
ful incentive to reflection on the subject, and to such 
endeavours to further it as we can make, in the signs of 
a movement towards it, the greater prominence which 
the subject has assumed in the thought of Christians, the 
evidence of more fervent aspirations after it, the clearer 
recognition of the injury caused by divisions. I remember 
that some 40 or more years ago, one of the most eminent 
and justly esteemed preachers of the day defended the 
existence of many denominations among Christians on 
the ground that through their competition a larger 
amount of work for the advance of the kingdom of God 
is accomplished. We are not so much in love with com- 
petition and its effects in any sphere now. And it should 
always have been perceived that, whatever its rightful 
place in the economic sphere might be, it had none in 
the promotion of purely moral and spiritual ends. The 
preacher to whom I have alluded did not stand alone in 
his view, though perhaps it was not often so frankly 
expressed. But at least acquiescence in the existence of 
separated bodies of Christians, as a thing inevitable, was 
commoner than it is now. 

In the new attitude to this question of the duty of 
unity that has appeared amongst us there lies an oppor- 
tunity which we must beware of neglecting. It is a move- 

I — 2 



4 Unity between Christian Denominations 

ment of the Spirit to which it behoves us to respond 
energetically, or it will subside. Shakespeare had no 
doubt a different kind of human enterprises mainly in 
view when he wrote : 

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 

But this observation is broadly true of all human pro- 
gress. An advance of some kind in the relations of men 
to one another, or the remedying of some abuse, begins 
to be urged here and there, and for a time those who urge 
it are but little listened to. Then almost suddenly (as it 
seems) the minds of many, one hardly knows why, be- 
come occupied with it. If in the generation when that 
happens desire leads to concentrated effort, the good of 
which men have been granted the vision in their minds 
and souls will be attained. Otherwise interest in it will 
pass away, and the hope of securing it, at least for a long 
time, will be lost. 

Before we attempt to consider any of the problems 
presented by the actual state of Christendom in con- 
nexion with the subject now before us, let us go back in 
thought to the position of believers in Jesus Christ of the 
first generation, when His own brief earthly life had 
ended. They form a fellowship bound together by faith in 
their common Lord, by the confident hopes with which 
that faith has inspired them, and the new view of life 
and its duties which they have acquired. Soon indeed 
instances occur in which the bonds between different 
members of the body become strained, owing especially 
to differences of origin and character in the elements of 



V. H. Stanton 5 

which it was composed. We have an example at a very 
early point in the narrative of the book of Acts in the 
dissatisfaction felt by behevers from among Hellenistic 
Jews, who were visiting, or had again taken up their 
abode at, Jerusalem, because a fair share of the alms was 
not assigned to their poor by the Palestinian believers, 
who had the advantage of being more permanently esta- 
blished in the cit}^, and were probably the majority. But 
the chiefs among the brethren, the Apostles, take wise 
measures to remove the grievance and prevent a breach. 
A few years later a far more serious difference arises. 
Jewish believers in Jesus had continued to observe the 
Mosaic Law. When converts from among the Gentiles 
began to come in the question presented itself, "Is observ- 
ance of that Law to be required of them?" Only on con- 
dition that it was would many among the Jewish believers 
associate with them. In their eyes still all men who did 
not conform to the chief precepts of this Law were 
unclean. It is possible that there were Jews of liberal 
tendencies, men who had long lived among Gentiles, to 
whom this difficulty may have seemed capable of settle- 
ment by some compromise. But in the case of most Jews, 
not merely in Palestine, but probably also in the Jewish 
settlements scattered through the Grseco-Roman world, 
religious scruples, ingrained through the instruction they 
had received and the habits they had formed from child- 
hood, were deeply offended by the very notion of joining 
in comm^on meals with Gentiles, unless they had fulfilled 
the same conditions as full proselytes to Judaism, the so- 
called "proselytes of righteousness." On behalf, however, 
of Gentiles who had adopted the Faith of Christ, it was 
felt that the demand for the fulfilment of this condition 



6 Unity between Christian Denominations 

of fellowship must be resisted at once and to the utter- 
most. So St Paul held. To concede it would have caused 
intolerable interference with Gentile liberty, and hin- 
drance to the progress of the preaching of the Gospel 
and its acceptance in the world. And further — upon this 
consideration St Paul insisted above all — the requirement 
that Gentiles should keep the Jewish Law might be taken 
to imply, and would certainly encourage, an entirely 
mistaken view of what was morally and spiritually of 
chief importance; it would put the emphasis wrongly in 
regard to that which was essential in order that man 
might be in a right relation to God and in the way of 
salvation. 

But the point in the history of this early controversy 
to which I desire in connexion with our present subject 
to draw attention is the fact that it is not suggested from 
any side that Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians 
should form two separate bodies that would exist side 
by side in the many cities where both classes were to be 
found, keeping to their respective spheres, endeavouring 
to behave amicably to one another, "agreeing to differ" 
as the saying is. This would have been the plan, we may 
(I think) suppose, which would have seemed the best to 
that worldly wisdom, which is so often seen to be folly 
when long and broad views of history are taken. And we 
can imagine that not a few of the ecclesiastical leaders of 
recent centuries might have proposed it, if they had been 
there to do so. P'or never, perhaps, have there been more 
natural reasons for separation than might have been 
found in those national and racial differences, and in those 
incompatibilities due to previous training and associa- 
tions between Christians of Jewish and Gentile origin. 



V. H. Stanton 7 

Yet it is assumed all through that they must combine. 
And St Paul is not only sure himself that to this end 
Jewish prejudices must be overcome, but he is able to 
persuade the elder Apostles of this, as also James who 
presided over the believers at Jerusalem, though they 
had been slower than he to perceive what vital principles 
were at stake. Believers of both classes must join in the 
Christian Agapse, or love-feasts, and must partake of the 
same Eucharist, because the many are one loaf^, one 
body. They must grasp, and give practical effect to, the 
principle that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither 
bond nor free, neither male nor female, for all are one in 
Christ Jesus 2," 

For that society, or organism, into which Jewish and 
Gentile believers were alike brought, a name was found ; 
it was that of E celesta, translated Church. It will be worth 
our while to spend a few moments on the use of this name 
and its significance. We find mention in the New Testa- 
ment of "the Church" and of "Churches." What is the 
relation between the singular term and the plural histori- 
cally, and what did the distinction import? The sublime 
passages concerning the Church as the Body of Christ 
and the Bride of Christ occur in the Epp. to the Colossians 
and Ephesians^, which are not among the early Pauline 
Epistles. Nevertheless in comparatively early Epistles, 
the authorship of which by St Paul himself is rarely 
disputed, there are expressions which seem plainly to 
shew that he thought of the Church as a single body to 
which all who had been baptized in the Name of Jesus 
Christ belonged. In the Epp. to the Galatians and 

1 I Cor. X. 17, R.V. mg. 2 q^I. iii. 28. 

' Col. i. 18, 24; Eph. i. 22, V. 23 ff. 



8 Unity between Christian Denominations 

I Corinthians^ he refers to the fact that he persecuted the 
"Church of God," and his persecution was not confined 
to behevers in Jerusalem or even in Judaea, but extended 
to adjacent regions. He might have spoken of "the 
Churches of vSyria," as he does elsewhere (using the 
plural) of those of Jud^a, Galatia, Asia, Macedonia 2. But 
he prefers to speak of the Church, and he describes it as 
"the Church of God." The impiety of his action thus 
appeared in its true light. He had not merely attacked 
certain local associations, but that sacred body — "the 
Church of God." Again, it is evident that he is thinking 
of a society embracing believers everywhere when he 
writes to the Corinthians concerning different forms of 
ministry, " God placed some in the Church, first Apostles, 
secondarily prophets" and so forth^. Again, when he bids 
the Corinthians, " Give no occasion of stumbling, either to 
Jews or to Greeks, or to the Church of God*," or asks them 
whether they "despise the Church of God^," although 
it was their conduct to brethren among whom they lived 
that was especially in question, it is evident that, as in 
the case of his own action as a persecutor, the gravity 
of the fault can in his view only be truly measured when it 
is realised that each individual Church is a representative 
of the Church Universal. This representative character 
of local Churches also appears in the expression common 
in his Epistles, the " Church in " such and such a place. 

The usage of St Paul's Epistles does not, therefore, 
encourage the idea that the application of the term 
ecclesia to particular associations preceded its application 

^ Gal. i. 13; I Cor. xv. 9. 

2 I Cor. xvi. I, 19; 2 Cor. viii. i; Gal. i. 2, 22. 

3 I Cor. xii. 28. * I Cor. x. 32. ° i Cor, xi. 22. 



V. H. Stanton 9 

to the whole body, but the contrary, and plainly it 
expressed for him from the first a most sublime concep- 
tion. I may add that there is no reason to suppose that 
the use of the term originated with him. We find it in 
the Gospel according to St Matthew, the Epistle of 
St James and the Apocalypse of St John, writings which 
shew no trace of his influence. 

There is no passage of the New Testament from which 
it is possible to infer clearly the idea which underlay its 
application to believers in Jesus Christ. But when it is 
considered how full of the Old Testament the minds of 
the first generation of Christians were, it must appear to 
be in every way most probable that the word ecclesia 
suggested itself because it is the one most frequently 
employed in the Greek translation of the Old Testament 
(the Septuagint) to render the Hebrew w^ord kahal, the 
chief term used for the assembly of Israel in the presence 
of God, gathered together in such a manner and for such 
purposes as forced them to realise their distinctive 
existence as a people, and their peculiar relation to God. 
The believers in Jesus now formed the ecclesia of God, the 
true Israel, which in one sense was a continuation of the 
old and yet had taken its place. This was the view put 
forward by Dr Hort in his lectures on the Christian 
Ecclesia^, and it is at the present time widely, I believe 
I may say generally, held. I may mention that the eminent 
German Church historians, A. Harnack^ and Sohm^, give 
it without hesitation as the true one. 

Among the Jews the thought of the people in its rela- 

^ The Christian Ecclesia, pp. 3 ff. 

2 Die Mission u. Ausbreitung d. Christentums, p. 292. 

2 Kirchenrecht, i. pp. 16 ff. 



10 Unity between Christian Denominations 

tion to God was associated with great assemblies in the 
courts and precincts of the temple at Jerusalem, which 
altogether overshadowed any expression of their covenant 
relation to God as a people which they could find in their 
synagogue-worship, however greatly they valued the 
bonds with one another which were strengthened, and 
the spiritual help which they obtained, through their 
synagogues. But Christians had no single, central meeting- 
place for their common worship at which their ideal unity 
was embodied. It was, therefore, all the more natural 
that the exalted name which described that unity should 
be transferred to the communities in different places 
which shared the life, the privileges, and the responsi- 
bilities of the whole, and in many ways stood to those 
who composed them severally for the whole. The divisions 
between these communities were local only. They arose 
from the limitations to intercourse and common action 
which distance imposed. Or, in cases where the Church 
in some Christian's house is referred to, they were due to 
the necessity, or the great convenience, of meeting in 
small numbers, owing to the want of buildings for 
Christian worship, or the hostihty of the surrounding 
population. Moreover these local bodies were not suffered 
to forget the ties which bound them all together. Those 
in the Greek-speaking world were required to send alms 
to the Churches in Judaea. Again an individual Church 
was not free to disregard the judgment of the rest. After 
St Paul has reasoned with the Corinthians on the subject 
of a practice which he deemed inexpedient, he clinches 
the matter by declaring, " we have no such custom 
neither the Churches of God^." Lastly, the Apostles, and 

^ I Cor. xi. 1 6. 



V. H. Stanton ii 

preeminently St Paul, through their mission which, if 
not world-wide, at least extended over large districts, 
and the care of the Churches which they exercised, and 
the authority which they claimed in the name of Christ, 
and which was conceded to them, were a unifying power. 

Thus the plural "the Churches" has in important 
respects a different connotation in the New Testament 
from that which it has in modern times. In the Apostolic 
Age the distinction between the Church and the Churches 
is connected only with the different degrees to which a 
common life could be realised according to geographical 
proximity. By a division of this nature the idea of One 
Universal Church was not compromised. The local body 
of Christians in point of fact rightly regarded itself as 
representative of the whole body. The Christians in that 
place were the Church so far as it extended there. 

The preservation of unity within the Church of each 
place where it was imperilled by rivalries and jealousies 
and misunderstandings, such as are too apt to shew them- 
selves when men are in close contact with one another, 
and of unity between the Churches of regions remote 
from one another, in which case the sense of it is likely 
to be weak through want of knowledge and consequently 
of sympathy — these appear as twin- aims severally pur- 
sued in the manner that each required. Not indeed that 
it is implied that everything is to be sacrificed to unity. 
But it is demanded that the most strenuous endeavours 
shall be made to maintain it, and it appears to be as- 
sumed that without any breach of it, loyalty to every 
other great principle, room for the rightful exercise of 
every individual gift, recognition of every aspect of 
Divine truth the perception of which may be granted to 



12 Unity between Christian Denominations 

one or other member of the body, can be secured, if 
Christians cultivate right dispositions of mutual affection 
and respect. 

There is one more point in regard to the idea of the 
Church in the New Testament as to which we must not 
suffer ourselves to be misled, or confused, b}^ later con- 
ceptions and our modern habits of thought. We have 
become accustomed to a distinction between the Church 
Visible and the Church Invisible which makes of them 
two different entities. According to this, one man who is 
a member of the Church Visible may at the same time, 
if he is a truly spiritual person, even while here on earth 
belong to the Church Invisible; but another who has a 
place in the Church Visible has none and it may be never 
will have one in the Church Invisible. This conception, 
though it had appeared here and there before the i6th 
century, first obtained wide vogue then under the influence 
of the Protestant Reformation. 

It arose through a very natural reaction from the 
mechanical view of membership in the Church, its con- 
ditions and privileges, which had grown up in the Middle 
Ages. But it does not correspond to the ideas of the 
Apostolic Age. According to these there is but one Church, 
the same as to its true being on earth as it is in heaven, 
one Body of Christ, composed of believers in Him who 
had been taken to their rest and of those still in this 
world. In the earlier part of the Apostohc Age the great 
majority were in fact still in this world. The Body was 
chiefly a Visible Body. It had many imperfections. Some 
of its members might even have no true part in it at all 
and require removal. But Christ Himself "sanctifies and 
cleanses it that He may present it" — that very same 



V. H. Stanton 13 

Church — "to Himself a glorious Church, without spot or 
wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish^." 

Now while one can understand the point of view from 
which in later times vSO deep a line of demarcation has been 
drawn between the Visible and the Invisible Church as 
to make of them two entirely separate things, and although 
to many it may still seem hard to do without this dis- 
tinction, or in the existing condition of the nominally 
Christian world to employ that primitive conception of 
the Church even as, so to speak, a working hypothesis, 
I would ask whether the primitive conception is not a 
nobler and sounder one. Surely it places the ideal in its 
right relation to the actual. The full realisation of the 
ideal no doubt belongs only to another world; yet if we 
believe in it as an ideal we must seek to actualise it here. 
There is something unwholesome in acknowledging any 
ideal which we do not strive so far as we can to actualise. 
And plainly participation in the same grace, and the 
spiritual ties arising therefrom, ought to find expression 
in an outer life of fellowship, of intercourse and common 
action, and such common organisation as for human 
beings in this world these require. No doubt it is always 
too possible that the outward may hinder the perception 
of the inward. But if we can guard successfully against 
this danger, the inward and spiritual will become all the 
more potent by having the external form through which 
to work ; while the outward, if it is too sharply dissevered 
in thought from the inward, loses its value and even 
becomes injurious. 

Again, a view of the Church is more wholesome which 
does not encourage us to classify its members in a manner 

1 Ephes. V. 26, 27. 



14 Unity between Christian Denominations 

only possible to the Allseeing G od ; to draw a line between 
true believers and others, and to determine (it may be) 
on which side of the line different ones are by their 
having had spiritual experiences similar to our own, and 
having learned to use the same religious language that 
we do; but which on the contrary leads us to think of all 
as under the Heavenly Father's care, and subject to the 
influences of the Holy Spirit, and placed in that Body of 
Christ where, although the spiritual life in them is as 
yet of very various degrees of strength, and their knowledge 
of things Divine in many cases small, all may and are 
intended to advance to maturity in Christ. 

It is necessary that the relation of the idea of the 
Church upon which I have been dwelling to her subsequent 
history for centuries should be clearly apprehended. Its 
hold on the minds of Christians preceded the very begin- 
nings of organisation in the Christian communities, and 
it would probably be no exaggeration to say that it 
governed the whole evolution of that organisation for 
many centuries. Particular offices were doubtless insti- 
tuted and men appointed to them with specific reference 
to needs which were making themselves felt. But all the 
while that idea of the Church's unity and of her holiness 
was present in their thoughts. And certainly as soon as it 
becomes necessary to insist upon the duty of loyalty to 
those who had been duly appointed to office, and directly 
or indirectly to defend the institutions themselves, 
appeal is made to. the idea, as notably by the two chief 
Christians in the Sub-Apostolic Age, Clement of Rome 
and Ignatius. 

It is in itself evidence of a common spirit and common 
tendencies that broadly speaking the same form of con- 



V. H. Stanton 15 

stitution in the local Christian communities, though not 
introduced everywhere with quite equal rapidity, was 
so nearly everywhere almost on the confines of the 
Apostolic Age, and that soon it was everywhere. Ere long, 
with this form of government as a basis, plans were 
adopted expressly for the purpose of uniting the local 
Churches on terms of equality among themselves, especi- 
ally in combating error. And at length in the name still 
of the Church's unity there came, however much we may 
regret it, the centralisation of Western Christendom in 
the See of Rome. 

All these measures of organisation, from the earliest 
to the latest of them, were means to an end; and we shall 
regard them differently. But we ought not any of us to 
regard means, however they may commend themselves 
to us, and however sacred and dear their associations 
may be, in the same way as we do the end. There must 
always be the question, which will present itself in a 
different light to different minds, whether particular 
means, even though men may have been led by the Holy 
Spirit to employ them, were intended for all time. More- 
over there are points in regard to the earliest history of 
Church organisation which remain obscure, in spite of 
all the labour that has been expended in investigating 
them: for instance the exact relation of different minis- 
tries, of the functions of different ofl&cers, to one another, 
the exact moment when the orders of ministers which 
proved to be permanent appeared in this or that impor- 
tant Church, 'the part which any of the immediate 
disciples of Christ had in their establishment, the ideas 
which at first were held as to the dependence of the rites 
of the Church for their validity upon being performed 



1 6 Unity between Christian Denominations 

by a lawful ministry. Upon these matters, or some of 
them, it is possible for honest and competent inquirers to 
hold different opinions. But no such doubt hangs over 
that End which was also the Beginning, of the Church's 
life, that conception of what she is, or ought to be, as 
the society of those who confess the Name of Jesus 
Christ, and who are His Body. I insist upon this because 
I think that amid discussions on the origin of the 
Christian Ministry, the significance of that more funda- 
mental question, namely, the right conception of the 
Christian Church, is apt to be too much lost sight of. 
About this, though men still do not, they ought to be 
able to agree, and it should be our common inspira- 
tion, both impelling us and guiding us in seeking our 
goal. 

We need it to impel us. The obstacles to the reunion 
of Christendom at the present day are such that a motive 
which can be found is required to induce and sustain 
action in seeking it, whenever and wherever the oppor- 
tunity for doing so presents itself ; such a motive is to 
be found in a deep conviction of the sacredness of this ob- 
ject, so that our eyes maybe kept fixed upon it even when 
there appears to be no opening through which an advance 
toward it can be made, and there is nothing to be done 
save to wait and watch and pray. But in order also that 
the result of any efforts that are made may be satis- 
factory, it is necessary that our minds should be under 
the guidance of a great and true idea, and that we should 
not simply be animated with the desire of meeting 
immediate needs. These are the reasons which I think 
justify me for having detained you so long over the 
consideration of the fundamental conception of the 



V. H. Stanton 17 

Church which is rooted in the Christian Faith itself as it 
first appeared and spread in the world. 

I will now, however, before concluding make a few 
remarks on one part of the complicated problem of 
reunion facing us to-day. The part of it on which I desire 
to speak is the relations between the Church of England, 
and the Churches in communion with her in various 
parts of the British Empire and in the United States, on 
the one hand, and on the other English Nonconformists, 
the Presbyterians of Scotland, and all EngHsh-speaking 
Christians allied to or resembling these. It will, I think, 
be generally felt that this is a part of the subject which 
for more than one reason specially invites our attention. 
There are, indeed, some, both clergy and laity, of the 
Church of England, though they are but a very small 
number in comparison with its members as a whole, 
whose interest in the subject of the reunion of Christen- 
dom is mainly shewn in the desire to obtain recognition 
for the Church of England, as a portion of the Church 
Catholic, from the great Church of the West, But in view 
of the attitude maintained by that Church there appears 
to be no prospect of this and nothing to be gained by 
attempts at negotiation. Endeavours to establish inter- 
communion with the Churches of Eastern Christendom 
may be made with more hope of success. Indeed there is 
reason to think that in the years to come the Church of 
England may be in a specially favourable position for 
getting into touch with these Churches and assisting them 
to recover from the effects of the War, and to make pro- 
gress; and Englishmen generally would, I am sure, rejoice 
that she should undertake such work. But the question of 
the duty to one another of all those bodies of English 

C. E.L. 2 



1 8 Unity between Christian Denominations 

Christians which I have specified comes nearer home and 
should press upon our minds and hearts more strongly. 
It is a practical one in every English town and every 
country parish, and almost everywhere throughout the 
world where the English language is spoken. Moreover, 
even the most loyal members of the Church of England, 
in spite of the points of principle on which they are 
divided from those other EngHsh Christians, resemble 
them more closely in many respects in their modes of 
thought, even on religion, than they do the members of 
other portions of the ancient Catholic Church from which 
they have become separated. And in addition to the 
distinctly religious reasons for considering the possibility 
of drawing more closely together and even ultimately 
uniting in one communion these different denominations 
of British Christians, there is a patriotic motive for doing 
so. Fuller religious sympathy, more cooperation, between 
the members of these different denominations could not 
fail to strengthen greatly the bonds between different 
classes amongst us, and to increase the coherency of the 
whole nation and empire. , 

It would be unwise, if in proposing steps towards 
reunion, difficulties and dangers connected with them 
were ignored; and I believe it to be my duty frankly to 
refer to some which suggest themselves to one looking 
from a Churchman's point of view. There are two chief 
barriers to the union of members of the Church of England 
and English Nonconformists that must be mentioned. 

(i) That which I will refer to first is the connexion 
of the Church of England with the State. 

This connexion is not, I think, such a hindrance to 
religious sympathy as it was, but it would be untrue to 



V. H. Stanton 19 

sa}^ that it is none. And there is of course the danger that 
if disestabhshment became a poHtical question, and 
especially if it involved the deflection of endowments 
which have long been used, and on the whole well-used, 
for the maintenance and furtherance of religion to 
secular objects, feeling between the majority of Church- 
men and those who in consequence of their views in the 
matter became opposed to them might be seriously 
embittered. Yet there is good ground for hoping that 
the question of the relations of Church and State and all 
matters connected therewith will in the years that are 
coming be faced in a calmer spirit, and with truer insight 
into important principles, than too often they have been 
in the past. It should certainly be easier for those who 
approach them from different sides to understand one 
another. Particular grievances connected with inequality 
of treatment by the State have been removed; while 
a broad principle for which Nonconformists stand in 
common has come to be more clearly asserted, through 
their attaching increasingly less significance to the 
grounds on which different bodies amongst them were 
formed, as indicated in the names by which they have 
been severally known, and banding themselves together 
as the ''Free Churches." But in the Church of England 
also in recent years there has been a growing sense of the 
need of freedom. It is better realised than at one time 
that in no circumstances could the Church rightly be 
regarded as a mere department of the State, or even 
as the most important aspect of the life of the State. 
However complete the harmony between Church and 
State might be, the Church ought to have a corporate Hfe 
of her own. She requires such independence as may enable 

2 — 2 



20 Unity between Christian Denominations 

her to be herself, to do her own work, to act according to 
the laws of her own being. This is necessary even that she 
may discharge adequately her own function in the nation. 
It is not part of my duty now to inquire in what respects 
the Church of England lacks this freedom, or whether 
such readjustments in her connexion with the State can 
be expected as would secure it to her, implying as the 
making of them would that, although she does not now 
include among her members more than half the nation, 
she is still for an indefinitely long time to continue to be 
the official representative of religion in the nation. But 
I would urge that when these points are discussed the 
question should also be considered whether, in a nation 
the great majority in which profess to be Christian, the 
State ought not to make profession of the Christian 
religion, which involves its establishment in some form, 
and whether there are not substantial benefits especially 
of an educative kind to be derived therefrom for the 
nation at large ; and if so how this can in existing circum- 
stances be suitably done. It should be remembered that 
in many cases the forefathers of those who are now 
separated from the National Church did not hold that a 
connexion between Church and State under any form 
was wrong; but on the contrary their idea of a true 
and complete national life included one. I think it is well 
to recall the view in this matter of men of another time. 
It is desirable that we should make our consideration of 
the whole subject of Church and State as broad as we 
can, and that we should strive not to be carried away into 
accepting some solution which at the moment seems the 
easiest, when with a little patience some better and truer 
one might be found possible. 



V. H. Stanton 21 

(2) The other barrier to which I have referred is the 
claim of the Church of England to a continuity of 
faith and Hfe with the faith and hfe of the Church 
Universal from the beginning, maintained in the first 
place through a Ministry the members of which have 
in due succession received their commission by means 
of the Historic Episcopate, and, secondly, through the 
acknowledgment of certain early and widely accepted 
creeds. This continuity was reasserted when the Church 
of England started on her new career at the Reforma- 
tion, though at the same time the necessity was then 
strongly insisted on of testing the purity and soundness 
of the Church's faith and forms of worship by Holy 
Scripture. These guarantees and means of continuity 
are valued in very different degrees by different sec- 
tions of opinion in the Church of England, and some 
who attach comparatively httle importance to matters 
of organisation would attach great importance to the 
formularies of behef. But there can be no doubt that 
any steps which appeared seriously to compromise the 
preservation of the great features of the ' Church of 
England in either of these respects would cause deep 
disturbance among her members. On the other hand, it 
will be readily understood by all who can appreciate the 
changes that in our own and recent generations have 
come in men's view of Nature and of Mind, and in the 
interpretation of historical evidence, that definitions of 
belief framed in the past may not in every point express 
accurately the beliefs of all who nevertheless with full 
conviction own Jesus Christ as Lord. It is obvious, I 
think, that, if the Christian Church is to endure, there 
must be on the part of her members essential loyalty to 
the faith out of which she sprang, and which has inspired 



22 Unity between Christian Denominations 

her throughout the ages to this day. But it is an anxious 
problem for the Church of England at the present time — 
and it is likely to become so likewise, if it is not yet, for 
all portions of the Church in which ancient standards of 
belief, or those framed in the i6th century, or later, hold 
an authoritative place — to decide wherein essential 
loyalty to "the faith once delivered" consists. 

It may seem at first sight that when the Church of 
England has serious questions to grapple with affecting 
her internal unity, and especially affecting that unity in 
variety which to some considerable degree she represents 
and which is the most valuable kind of unity, attempts to 
join with other Christians outside her borders in con- 
sidering a basis of union with them are unwise at least 
at the moment, as tending to increase the complexity 
and the difl&culties of the position within, and as there- 
fore to be deprecated in the interests of unity itself. 
I do not think so, but believe that assistance may thus 
be obtained in reaching a satisfactory settlement even of 
internal difficulties. 

For, in the first place, there has of late been among 
members of the Church of England a change of temper 
which should be a preparation for considering her 
relations with those separated from her in a wiser and 
more liberal spirit than has before been possible. Those 
Churchmen who would insist most strongly on the 
necessity of preserving the Church's ancient order do not 
usually maintain the attitude to dissent of the Anglican 
High and Dry School, which was still common in the 
middle of the 19th century. The work which Nonconfor- 
mist bodies have done for the spiritual and moral life of 
England, and the immense debt which we all owe to them 
on that account, are thankfully admitted. No one indeed 



V. Ho Stanton 23 

can do otherwise than admit it thankfully who has eyes 
to see, and the sense of justice and generosity of mind to 
acknowledge what he sees. And the inference must be 
that, although the belief may be held as firmly as ever 
that the Spirit of God inspired that Order which so early 
took shape in the Church, and that He worked through 
it and continues to do so, yet that also, when men have 
failed rightly to use the appointed means, He has found 
other ways of working. This view, when it has had its 
due influence upon thought, can hardly fail to affect pro- 
foundly the measures proposed for healing the divisions 
which have arisen. 

Then, again, on the other side — the side of those 
separated from the Church of England — there is more 
appreciation of the point of view of Churchmen in respect 
to their Hnks with the past and their idea of Catholicity. 
This is due partly to a broader interest in the life of 
the Church in former ages and the heroic and saintly 
characters which they produced than since the Reforma- 
tion has been common among those English Christians, 
who are, in a special sense, children of the Reformation ; 
partly, perhaps, to a growing doubt, as views of Christian 
truth have become larger, whether after all a single 
doctrine or opinion, or reverence for the teaching of one 
man, can make a satisfactory basis for the permanent 
grouping of Christians. At the same time in regard to 
fundamental Christian belief, the meaning which the 
revelation of God in Christ has for them, they are and 
are conscious of being at one with the Church. 

Striking evidence of these new tendencies of thought 
on both sides is to be seen in the movement originated 
by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States 
for a World-Conference on Faith and Order, and in the 



24 Unity between Christian Denominations 

manner in which the proposal for such a Conference 
has been received in England, and the steps already 
taken in preparation for it. A body of representatives of 
the Church of England and of the Free Churches has 
been appointed, and a Committee of this body has already 
published suggestions for a basis of union. These have 
still, I understand, to come before the general body of 
English representatives, and it is intended (I believe) 
that the proposals of the Committee, after being examined 
and possibly amended and supplemented by the larger 
body, should, with any proposals that may be made from 
similar joint-bodies in the United States and in the 
British Dominions, be considered by a body of represen- 
tatives from the whole of this vast area. Any conclusions 
which are thus reached must then lie, so to speak, before 
all the denominations concerned. Opportunity must be 
given for their being widely studied and explained and 
reflected upon, and if need be criticized. For the Church 
of Christ is^ or ought to be, in a true sense a democratic 
society, a society in which, subject to its governing 
principles, the spiritual consciousness of all the faithful 
should make itself felt. 

For the end of such a process as this we must wait a 
considerable time. Meanwhile there are obvious ways in 
which the cause of unity may be promoted; viz. through 
seeking for a larger amount of intercourse with the 
members of other denominations than our own ; for more 
joint study of religious questions and frank interchange 
of views, and more cooperation in various forms of moral 
and social endeavour. The way would thus be, we may 
hope, prepared for fuller intercommunion, and it may be 
for corporate reunion, 



UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN 
DENOMINATIONS 

II. THE CHURCH IN THE FURNACE 
By the Rev. E. Milner-White, M.A., D.S.O. 

At last we have begun to see the absolute necessity of 
Unity in Christ, of religious reunion, for the sake of both 
Christianity and the world. 

For several years devout Christians in England have 
been growing more and more uneasy about their acqui- 
escence in religious division. The reading of the Gospels, 
and especially the eighteenth chapter of St John, where 
He prays on the threshold of His agony that His disciples 
may be one, even as He and the Father are one, has 
become nothing less than a torment to those who have 
any real passion for the doing of God's will, or who are 
humbled by the tremendous love of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
for each and for all. Thus far have we gone from the 
clear mind of Christ ; thus far have we ruined His plans 
for the health and happiness of the world; thus far have 
we failed to imitate or display the love, the humility, 
the self-sacrifice, that walked to Calvary : He bade us be 
one, and to love] we, the disciples, have chosen to hate 
and be many. 

English Christianity alone is split into hundreds of 
denominations. The fact is its own grim condemnation. 
We had lost even the sense that division mattered. It is 



26 Unity between Christian Denominations 

quite ridiculous to pretend that nothing is wrong with 
the rehgious ideas or state of a race, which produces 
hundreds of bodies, big and small, to worship Him who 
only asked that His worshippers should be ONE. 
Denomination itself has become a word of shame which 
we shall not be able to use much longer. It brings up at 
once the thought of something partial, little, far less than 
the Body for which Christ died; and a host of yet more 
horrid pictures of old squabbles and present rivalries, of 
contempt and bitterness and controversy. It does not 
suggest one Christian idea at aU. 

These uneasy thoughts even before the war were 
brought home by the practical results of disunion as 
worked out inevitably in the colonies and mission field. 
The language is not too strong that labels them monstrous. 
Here was the flower of our Christian devotion going 
forth to heathen wilds, meeting by God's grace with 
wide success; and establishing our little local denomina- 
tions firmly in the nations, tribes, and islands of Asia, 
Africa, and Australasia; rendering it hard for a native 
Christian who moves from his home to get elsewhere the 
accustomed ministries and means of grace vital to his 
young faith; planting seeds of future quarrel at the very 
birth of new tribes into the Prince of Peace. In the Do- 
minions, with their thin and widely scattered populations, 
other phenomena, equally deplorable, are manifest — five 
churches in places where one suffices, appalling waste of 
effort and money, and even ugly competition for ad- 
herents. 

In England we hardly saw these things. The population 
was large enough and indifferent enough to God to pro- 
vide room for the activities of all. The indifference indeed 



E. MiLNER- White 27 

seemed to be growing. We did not stop to think whether 
disgust at continuous controversy had not done much to 
cause that indifference — how far our divisions simply- 
manufactured scepticism as to there being any reHgious 
truth — whether the obvious lovelessness of such con- 
ditions was hkely to recommend the rehgion of Love — 
whether this disparate chaos was likely to be a field in 
which the Lord, who designed and founded one brother- 
hood of believers, could work or give His grace to the 
uttermost. No, the Christianity of our Christians has 
tended to be a thin individual thing, with interests 
scarcely extended beyond its own local congregation, 
which is bad enough; or still worse, in our towns, content 
to wander from congregation to congregation, owning no 
discipline or loyalty at all. 

And yet in the same breath as we say, "I believe in God,** 
we also say, most of us, "I believe one Catholick and 
Apostolick Church.*' It is a crowning mercy that we do 
say it; that we do bear witness so outright to the state 
of sin in which we dwell ; the clause does keep the mind of 
Christ and our own duty before us, of establishing as the 
first, perhaps the only hope of this sin-stained, war- 
stained earth, the brotherhood of believers which shall 
be one. 

Then came the war, and in many ways the war, which 
has in every direction cleared vision, and both deepened 
and simplified thought, has brought home to every 
Christian both the disaster of disunion, and the imperative 
need of attempting unity. 

You will expect me to give some account of the reaction 
of the chaplains and the Church in France to this con- 
viction. Perhaps I should make clear my own position. 



28 Unity between Christian Denominations 

Folk probably term me an " advanced High Churchman." 
I should call myself "a Catholic" — an English Catholic, 
if you like — , at any rate, one who cannot fairly be accused 
of ignorance of the details and depths of our divisions; 
nor of underestimating their real importance. 

The priests who went out as Chaplains to the Forces 
had an experience somewhat similar to that of colonial 
or missionary priests — they exercised their ministry 
under totally new conditions, and in a new atmosphere. 
So did the Roman Catholics, Nonconformists, and 
Presbyterians, but of course I do not speak for them in 
what follows. But all the Church of England padres — 
high, low, broad — tell exactly the same tale of their 
experience; between them there has been no division; 
they have worked together in perfect harmony and 
keenness, largely appropriating each other's methods. 
In a word, they have discovered how false and artificial 
is the partisan atmosphere of home religion; and when 
they return, will find it hard to tolerate any continuance 
of it. 

The Church of England is as a matter of fact divided 
roughly into three sections, by no means corresponding 
to the "high, low, and broad," of the church journals. 
Most Church of England men scarcely know what these 
terms mean. No, it consists of a devoted inmost section, 
regular churchgoers and communicants — and you will 
pardon me for thinking them the best instructed, the 
freest, and the sturdiest Christians in the world. They 
are of course in a minority, but they are actually numer- 
ous enough to occupy the time and care of our whole 
ministry, which is far below reasonable strength. Then 
comes a large fringe, who come to Church occasionally. 



E. Milner-White . 29 

or even regularly, in the evening; who make little or no 
use of the Sacraments, or of the more intimate devotions 
and instructions provided: they are well disposed; but 
are not consciously prepared to make sacrifices for their 
faith; and indeed are somewhat ignorant of its contents 
and demands. Then thirdly, there is a yet vaster multi- 
tude, baptised, married, and buried, perhaps by the 
Church, and therefore counting themselves Church of 
England, but who come but rarely within the orbit of 
Church hfe and teaching; and who, not to mince words, 
are semi-pagan. Only s^;wz-pagan because the ethics, 
morals and traditions of England are Christian ; and these 
people, knowing little of Jesus Christ, and understanding 
less, and not consciously moved by Him, yet not infre- 
quently rise to heights of love and sacrifice which would 
adorn the life of a saint. 

The mass of our parishioners in France, then, was not 
made up of the inner circle — we were lucky if we found 
three or four in a unit — but of the ill-instructed fringe, and 
the totally ignorant multitudes. The horror and boredom 
of war, the personal insecurity, the difficulty of under- 
standing the ways of God, made all friendly to the parson 
with whom hitherto they had never come into contact ; and 
caused large numbers to think things out, and to hunger 
for an understanding of God. Religion became a common 
topic of discussion. The padres found themselves in a 
larger world, where old labels and divisions simply had 
no meaning; and where the first necessity and work 
was to preach Christ and teach the meaning of the Faith. 
They felt also, very quickly, that this interest in ultimate 
things did not mean that men became friendly to organ- 
ised religion in any form. On the contrary, their hostility 



30 Unity between Christian Denominations 

and distrust toward all religious bodies were marked. The 
chaplains had that common and dreadful experience of 
foreign missionaries, of feeling themselves alone, closed 
round by thick dark walls of unsympathy and worse. 
They longed for the help and support of any genuine 
friend of Christ, whatever body he belonged to. I was 
called upon to preach the National Mission in a peculiarly 
hostile and irresponsive camp of motor lorry drivers, 
who much resented the use of "their" Y.M.C.A. hut for 
such religious purposes. A Wesleyan minister had charge 
of it, and got far more of their blunt language than I the 
visitor did; but he worked undismayed and unreservedly 
for all he was worth, for the National Mission and for me. 
The alliance was natural, real, inevitable. He and I, and 
some five or six men of that camp, were clearly on one 
side, and the rest of it on the other, of an exceeding broad 
gulf. With this as a daily experience, a man's values 
changed rapidly; and it became quite obvious that, even 
to begin to fight the battle of Christianity in the modern 
world. Christians must be united. 

This assurance was reinforced by the quite extraordi- 
nary scandal that the mere fact of religious disunion 
caused both to officers and men. It was the big, obvious 
"damper" on the very threshold of Christianity — "see 
how these Christians hate one another." Officers would 
throw the taunt up again and again in the Mess, and the 
men lying down to talk themselves to sleep in their 
comfortless barns would begin to talk about religion 
with at heart a wistful longing to understand it and know 
its help and power. At once, someone would bring up 
the picture of squabbling denominations, and the wist- 
fulness and hope would be slain by scorn. Next day and 



E. MiLNER- White 31 

every day, the glaring scandal would be laid before the 
chaplain; who had little enough to answer. Of course, 
it is quite false to suppose that the existence and con- 
tinuance of division are due to the clergy. Our English 
schisms have been caused at least as much by over-eager 
laymen as by over-eager clergy; and I think if it were 
left to the clergy alone the process of reuniting would 
be very rapid. In our Division, for instance, the three 
Nonconformist Chaplains to the Forces and I used to 
talk over the whole question; one was an orthodox 
Wesleyan, another a Primitive, and the other a United 
Methodist ; and they did not hesitate to say that Methodist 
reunion had taken place more than ten years ago if it 
had been left to the ministers alone. But the average 
Englishman naturally blames the official representatives 
of religion, their ministries, for the obvious and open 
disgrace of division in the religion of love ; he is ignorant 
of the excuses that history, and the real importance of 
the matters in dispute, afford ; he only sees the evil fact ; 
and it is quite enough by itself to excuse his closer 
association with so harsh a contradiction of the first 
principle of Christ and Christianity. 

Then again in France, one came up violently against 
the sheer nuisance and waste of division. Imagine upon 
a Friday every CO. and adjutant (and adjutants are 
always over-worked) of every unit approached by three 
Chaplains — Church of England, Roman Catholic, and 
Nonconformist ; and requested to make different arrange- 
ments at different times for different fractions of his 
command to attend divine service on the Sunday. 
This in the midst of modern war, where organisation for 
war purposes is complex and laborious enough. The mere 



32 Unity between Christian Denominations 

typing and circulating of these arrangements at Brigade 
and Divisional H.Q. mean in sum total a vast expen- 
diture of paper and labour. The chaplains, who, I hope, 
are at least gentlomen, feel considerable shame at being 
the guiltless authors of these confusions. And the effect 
is so deplorable. Just when the nation is one, just when 
each military unit seeks to promote, for mere military 
efficiency, the esprit de corps of its oneness, the religion 
of the one Christ enters as a thing which almost flaunts 
fissure. Or again, think of the mere waste of pastoral 
efficiency involved in this fact. Each infantry brigade 
consists roughly of four battalions, and three or four 
somewhat smaller units (R.A.M.C, M.G.C., etc.). For 
these there are four chaplains, normally two Church of 
England (who have 80 per cent, of the men under their 
care), one Roman Catholic and one Presbyterian or 
Nonconformist. The two latter have to do the best they 
can each to get round all these scattered units to provide 
for small handfuls of men in each. Each of the Church of 
England chaplains has to arrange for a whole half brigade. 
How much more efficiently and thoroughly, with how 
much less needless labour, had the work been done, if an 
one Church could have set one chaplain to live each with 
one battalion, and be responsible as well for one smaller 
unit. That had made it easy for a chaplain to know his 
flock intimately; now it is next to impossible. 

But above and beyond these misfortunes, which after 
all are details, must be ranked the big thoughts and 
truths which have swum into the sight and experience of 
everybody. The first is this. Granted that the Church like 
the world was surprised by the sudden outbreak of war, 
and therefore could not stop it ; yet that she should have 



E. MiLNER- White 33 

no voice at all even to denounce the unrighteousness 
and barbarities into which the world plunges deeper 
every day does strike men as wrong. The Church cannot 
speak because she is not one; even suppose all England 
be actually one national Church, if it is only national, 
it will go the way of the nation, and certainly cannot 
speak to other nations. For the Church ever to acquire a 
world-voice in the cause of love and right means that 
reunion and our desires for it must not stop short at 
home reunion. Here the witness of Roman Catholicism 
to the necessity of international Christianity is vital to 
the ideal of a reunited Christendom. Men, far removed 
from his obedience, did look wistfully to the Pope, con- 
ceding that he alone could speak such a word to the world 
in the name of Christ; wide and deep has been the 
disappointment that it was not spoken. Here again it is 
not the Pope, nor Roman CathoHcism, that is to blame, 
but the whole divided state of Christendom which 
paralyses the action of each communion, even the 
strongest and most widespread. 

I will mention only one other of these big truths — there 
are many of them — that have come home to every man ; 
where again Christian division is the first and fatal 
obstacle in the way. This time it affects all the looking 
forward to the end of the war, and the new world of peace. 
It is unthinkable but that the new world must be one 
of brotherhood,^ not of enmity; of love, not of hatred. 
Otherwise every drop of blood that has been shed, every 
tear that has fallen, every death that has been died, will 
be so much utter waste. That is the one most intolerably 
dark thought in .the days of darkness. There is a new 
poHcy open to the world which it has never yet tried, to 
c.E.L. 3 



34 Unity between Christian Denominations 

work toward the Dominance of Love. Every conceivable 
form of selfishness has in turn dominated the affairs of 
nations and men; never yet has love been seriously 
tried. But there will be no chance of International 
Friendship, Brotherhood, Love, if the Church, the 
fellowship of Christians, who are after all set in the world 
by their own confession, to live by love, to be the exem- 
plars and hot centre of love, cannot conspicuously shew 
forth love. How can the nations befriends before Christians 
be brothers? We have only to act according to our creed; 
and our creed does not only believe in brotherhood, but 
in the continual help of God Himself in our efforts to 
realise it. The influence upon the world even of a per- 
severing attempt to achieve a united Christendom would 
surely be decisive. Therefore the reunion of Christendom 
becomes now the imperious vocation of every Christian, 
the one preventive of our agony and loss going to waste, 
the one hope of a loveless world, the clear next objective 
of the Church of the living God. 

Before returning to the idea of the Dominance of Love, 
and a consideration of first steps towards it, let us go 
back to France, and watch the relations of the various 
communions there one to another after four years of war. 

It is new and rather hard to describe. The first few 
rtionths, when the Chaplains to the Forces of the various 
denominations arrived with their inherited home sus- 
picions one of another, presented many difficulties that 
might have increased ill-feeling. An army regulation 
which allows the Church of England chaplain only to 
minister to Church of England men, and the Roman 
Catholic to Roman Catholic men, etc., reduced the 
chances of such conflict ; and at the same time, the vast- 



E. MiLNER- White 35 

ness and urgency of the work the chaplains had to do 
swallowed up all other thoughts. As a writer in The 
Church in the Furnace said, " We have heard with 
mingled irritation and amusement that good folk at 
home have been exercised because an undue proportion 
of men of this party or that have been sent out; the 
question out here is not 'To what party does he belong? ' 
but ' Is he capable by character and life of influencing men 
for good, and winning them for God and His Church? '" 
Again, the extremely free use of the Prayer Book and of 
any and every sort of devotion, at any and every hour 
of day and night, has broken up. all prejudiced rigidity 
of use. Methods that did not help were dropped ; methods 
that helped men were welcome, from whatever source 
they came. 

So arose a great harmony, a harmony of energy and 
experiment; and although in religious matters the 
Roman Catholics retained their aloofness, the drawing 
together of other denominations, as represented by their 
clergy, has been constant and perfectly natural and 
unsuspicious. United services have not been common; 
each denomination has confined itself loyally to its own 
men; what the statements in the Lower House of 
Convocation meant to the effect that the amount of inter- 
communion going on at the Front would shock members 
of that house, no chaplain has any idea. But the new, 
fresh, and delightful thing is, the absolute lack of feeling 
between, say, the Catholic Anglican and the Congregation- 
alist. There are numerous occasions on which they must 
or can work together; on which they must or can do jobs 
for one another; and it has been decisively proved that 
the existing demarcation and rivalry in England is a 

3—^ 



36 Unity between Christian Denominations 

false and needless thing; and that working together can 
be a real, unselfconscious and wholly profitable matter. 
Our English airs are poisoned by past history and old 
social cleavage: in France, the past is forgotten, and 
social barriers do not exist. It is a matter of atmosphere, 
and there it is clear and bracing. Nobody sacrifices con- 
viction or principle, but they love one another. 

I do not say there may not be individual misunder- 
standings and frictions now and then, but they are 
miraculously few. The normal temper is shewn by the 
numerous meetings for conference and devotion by the 
various chaplains. These are more easy to effect at the 
bases than in the line; but the}/ take place everywhere. 
Typical is the conduct of a small base on the sea, where 
the eight chaplains or so meet regularly for devotion, 
and each is entrusted with a section of the proceedings 
each time. For instance, the American Episcopalian 
takes the Thanksgiving, the Presbyterian the Confession, 
the Wesleyan the Intercession, each of the others has 
found from the same chapter of, say, St Mark's Gospel, 
some "seed-thought" upon which he is allowed to dilate 
for four minutes. There is no constraint or self -conscious- 
ness in this gathering. Each is perfectly happy, and so is 
the whole. 

It is not surprising that out of such an atmosphere and 
among such practices a powerful passion for unity has 
arisen, based on something far stronger than sentiment, 
and having in it some of the fire of revelation. It has not 
been sought ; it has come ; it has grown : nobody expected 
it. It came, naturally and delightfully. The fifth year of 
war will assuredly see some definite policy or action 
towards greater unity proceeding from France. The quiet, 



E. MiLNER- White 37 

unhasty, resolved manner in which the Chaplains to the 
Forces in France are moving is in striking contrast to 
the hasty proposals and hasty actions threatening on the 
less prepared soil at home. Indeed in this last sentence 
I have touched upon the two actual terrors which the 
Church in France feels. First, that hasty and purely 
sectional action on unimaginative and traditional lines 
by the home-clergy will give the old party-feehng a new 
bitter lease of life, and by ruining unnecessarily the unity 
of the Church of England will destroy the hopes that 
are so fair of yet wider reunion. And second, that the 
local outlook of the lay-folk — in our villages especially 
perhaps — and local lines of cleavage, not having been 
subjected to the experience and discipline of France, will 
have the opposite effect, prevent things moving as fast 
as they ought, and throw away the fairest chance of 
buying up opportunity that ever was given to the 
Church of Christ. To these opposite dangers, I shall recur. 

The Dominance of Love in the world ! Let us see and 
absorb that big vision first, and its pathetic urgency : its 
summons to each body of Christians, and to every indi- 
vidual member of Christ. Acknowledge its necessity for 
the world, and therefore its immediate necessity for the 
Church of the God of Love. 

And next, before considering practical steps, let us 
recall certain postulates and axioms, which in any attempt 
to realise so magnificent a vision must always be borne 
in mind, lest, in our human frailty and selfwill, we head 
straight for new misunderstandings and disasters^. 

^ In the paragraphs which follow, I owe much to the Bishop of 
Zanzibar's The Fulness of Christ, perhaps the deepest and ablest 
of all the numerous Anglican books on Reunion. 



38 Unity between Christian Denominations 

I. The importance of unity is so great, and division 
has been found so calamitous, and the words of Christ 
are so definite on the subject, that I think all would admit 
now that Division is only to be prolonged for causes that 
are hacked by divine command. The larger Christian bodies 
are separated by convictions of great importance; but a 
severe and honest self-examination will probably lessen 
the number of differences which can justify the responsi- 
bility of so disastrous a thing as separation, and then we 
can set afoot conferences to deal with what remain. 
Human temperament, upbringing, tradition, human 
haste and pride have much to do with the birth, stabilising 
and continuance of division. A rare self-abnegation in 
our ecclesiastical history was the partial suicide of the 
Non-juring schism, and it has never been repeated; there 
were many great saints among the Nonjurors. If they 
could not take the oath of allegiance to William III, and 
therefore could not remain in the Church of England, 
the best of them recognised that their individual diffi- 
culty would not excuse them if they perpetuated them- 
selves as a Church. In any junction of existing divisions, 
differing customs and methods of worship and organi- 
sation can be and should be safeguarded. That would 
only make the more for the health of the one Body. But, 
division itself is only to be prolonged for causes that are, 
or seem to be by conscience, backed by divine command, 
and the first step in all work for reunion will be the 
isolating of these causes from lesser things, and their 
careful and prayerful reconsideration. 

A grand example of such process, of course, has been 
the Conference of the leaders of our English denomina- 
tions, at the inspiration of the American Committee of 



E. MiLNER- White 39 

Faith and Order, which during 1917 faced the question 
of Episcopacy. The findings of its "second interim report " 
are nothing less than a landmark in Church History. You 
remember that roughly it was this: that any corporate 
, reunion can only come in the acceptance of the historical 
Episcopate; but that the conception and use of Episco- 
pacy in the Church has been a limited one: there are 
many ways of regarding and using bishops besides the 
monarchical or "prelatical " way exemplified by the 
Church of England. This is a first proof that when truths, 
keenly felt and seemingly rival, are discussed in Confer- 
ence spirit, the angularities that offend disappear; and 
wider, bigger truth comes into the possession of all. It 
will be so more and more. By faith we can already see 
that the labour of understanding unto reunion is bound 
to be an immense creative period in the Church of God. 
2. Our second axiom sounds discouraging. Just this — 
that unity is, humanly speaking, impossible. Reunion 
means great changes of heart in great communions of 
men, and we all know how hard it is to effect change of 
heart even in the individual. We must not think that no 
price will have to be paid for so good a result, both by 
whole communions, and by the members composing 
them; and that the whole force of inherited prejudice, past 
history, and present wilfulness, ignorance, and sincere 
conviction will not arise in opposition. The difficulty 
even of approaching Rome illustrates vividly our task. 
The Unity of Christendom is a meaningless expression 
without that vast international Church, without her 
rich stores of devotion and experience, without her 
unbending witness to the first things of faith, worship 
and self-sacrifice. Here the "impossibility" is open and 



40 Unity between Christian Denominations 

honest, but I do not know that the difficulties will be 
greater than those, less obvious as yet, between other 
denominations. Yet with God all things are possible. 
This is only the miracle which He has set the faith of 
modern Christians to perform. 

3. Thirdly then, our rule must be, to hasten slowly. 
We are not dealing with matters susceptible of mere 
arrangement, but with convictions, which have deep roots 
in history, and cling passionately round the individual. 
Convictions can only be modified or changed gradually, 
by love and deeper spiritual learning. Bully or outrage a 
conviction, and you double its strength. That is why 
argument seldom does aught but harm. Argument is an 
attack upon another man's convictions, or semi-convic- 
tions, and inevitably fails to do anything but stiffen them. 
Inevitably therefore will hasty action by individuals 
or sections, for instance in the Church of England, for 
which other sections are not ready, throw these into 
suspicion and opposition. I speak of my own Communion 
and say deliberately, that if at the moment, either an 
individual, or a section — any section — of it goes galloping 
off, be its zeal and hope never so pure and splendid, on 
private roads, the whole desire for unity, and therefore 
the cause of unity, will be gravely damaged. 

For the whole Church of England — I think that can be 
truly said — has now an unutterable desire for the joy of 
Unity; it is, further, convinced that action must be 
taken; but it is by no means convinced that certain 
actions — to take a concrete example, free interchange of 
pulpits with Nonconformists — are as yet either helpful 
or right. If one part adopt such a policy, hostilely and 
sectionally, it will simply throw others into convinced 



E. MiLNER- White 41 

opposition and retard the whole desire for decades. 
Questions of deepest implication cannot be settled in 
haste. Before approaching at all, we must find the right 
methods of approach. Quite rightly, the American 
"World Conference for the consideration of questions 
touching Faith and Order," paid, from the start, the 
utmost, an uniquely scientific, attention to right method ; 
their patience has been lightning-swift in result. It did 
not even go so far as to say, "We will confer, that is the 
right method"; it said, "We will learn how to confer." 
It was a new and by no means easy exercise, but it 
has been learned, and the English Conference mentioned 
above, "the landmark," arose by its inspiration and 
worked by its methods. 

A wrong method of approach is equally well illustrated 
by the gathering of Evangelical clergy at Cheltenham^ 
early in the Spring. They discussed to some purpose, 
and at the end of a few days had drawn out a series of 
some dozen articles of principle and action. Some were 
unexceptionable, others went beyond what either the 
Bishops or other sections of the Church are yet ready to 
do. Such sectional action simply heads for disaster and 
vexation. And it is so foolish, so great and difficult an 
end being in view. Why should any sections of the Church 
meet or deal at all on this matter, except to put their 
views humbly at the disposal of their brethren in the 
Church? This matter concerns the whole Church; any 

^ It is fair to state that after this lecture was delivered, I re- 
ceived a note from one who had been at Cheltenham, saying that 
my references to it gave an inaccurate impression; and that the 
findings were only "an expression of opinion." To those, however, 
who read the published account of the meeting, whether in the 
Record or Guardian, much more seemed to be intended. 



42 Unity between Christian Denominations 

action is futile which does not carry the whole Church 
with it, and the whole Church is keen and anxious enough 
over the problem to be able to agree upon methods and 
policies which combine depth, wisdom, patience, and 
order. We have seen how titanic the labour is ; impatience 
will help nothing ; here if anywhere is needed the love 
that is patient, and ready for the travail of waiting and ^ 

praying. 

The cry of generous souls of course is "Something 
must be done." Of course it must ; but let anybody consider 
what sheer miracles of changed convictions on Unity 
have been " done " within ten, and even five years. Better 
than any such immediate action which would certainly 
cause division, is the enlarging of the scope and sphere 
of this miracle, so that the friendly conditions of France 
are naturally reproduced in England. 

With these precautions, then, let us see what can be 
done with universal consent. 

(a) The first thing is to turn the intellectual opinion 
that Christian division is wrong, and unity necessary, 
into a general passion. That is to say, we want to develop 
among us the motive of love. We all talk about love 
glibly, and about brotherhood and a new world, with 
very little sense of what these terms involve in the 
individual life. I am sure that we hardly know yet 
what love means nor what it exacts, nor guess into how 
many provinces of ordinary life it can and ought to 
operate; how many heritages of past history it must 
be allowed to wipe out, how many preconceived notions 
it must dissipate; into how many social, commercial, 
municipal, political relations it must begin to permeate. 
It was for this reason that an article which I wrote when 



E Milner-White 43 

in billets near Arras for the Church Quarterly Review sug- 
gested a new National Mission of Love in the Church of 
England. For the space of a month or more the one sub- 
ject dealt with by preachers and teachers throughout the 
Communion would be Love, in all its bearings, and with 
special reference to religious differences and their healing. 
I believe that this would be a splendid way of making the 
passion for new love and wider brotherhood general, an 
act of pure religion of highest importance both to our 
Christianity and national life, and sure of blessing by 
God. It would assure our Nonconformist brothers that 
we mean business, and mean it deeply. Perhaps they 
would follow suit in their own congregations. 

It is the more important, because there is a danger of 
the leaders and clergy of communions rushing ahead of 
the rank and file. Naturally they see the vast issues most 
clearly; the congregation sees more easily its own needs 
and habits of worship, and inclines to shut out of mind the 
needs and interests of the Church as a whole. A National 
Mission of Love, dealing with all history, the larger 
duties of the present, and future hopes, would help to 
correct this, and give a single mind to the whole body. 

(h) Then, in order that the Church of England may go 
forward as one whole, without the risk of sectional 
exasperation, it does seem to me an urgent necessity 
that — I do hope it is not a presumptuous suggestion — 
the Archbishops appoint a Council of Unity; to thrash 
out the whole subject, and decide on definite steps of 
action, both within and without the Church. 

My vision sees it thus. A small Council of, say, five 
Bishops, and a dozen other members. These dozen to be 
nominated, not elected, and to consist of the leading and 



44 Unity between Christian Denominations 

trusted men of each "party" with at least two of our 
greatest scholars. It must be small, so that it may truly 
"confer" — not drop into controversy — and meet regu- 
larly. It should issue definite advice and suggestion, all 
of which would be unanimous, upon which the whole 
Church could act, and act immediately. I am sure that 
the amount of unanimity would be surprising, and the 
advice bold. Perhaps the Archbishops and Bishops in 
accepting and issuing such reports would require them 
to be read in every pulpit in the land, so that the whole 
Communion understand what is going on, and each 
congregation be spurred to do its part in its own locality. 

The mere appointment of such a Council would be a 
notable step towards unity and place the whole matter 
on, so to speak, a scientific footing. The" Church of 
England would then be wisely and consistently ordered 
to the one end, and be thinking and acting as itself an 
unity; the danger of sectional action would be reduced 
to a minimum, and the mutual confidence of the sections 
be assured. Indeed it would be a hard blow to the bad 
party licence too common hitherto amongst us. Further, 
the Nonconformist communions would have a definite 
organ to approach on all subjects making for friendliness, 
cooperation, and conference, and sufficient certainty 
that the Church of England desired the peace of Jeru- 
salem very earnestly indeed. 

(c) There are a number of issues on which all com- 
munions could begin at once to work together. There is 
a real chance of abolishing war, and establishing a more 
or less universal peace. The idea of the League of Nations 
gains ground. Bishop Gore is already summoning the 
support and labour of the Church to it. Here serious 



E. MiLNER- White 45 

united effort of all Christian bodies, of Europe and 
America, is obviously fitting and might be decisive. 

There are the hundred social problems confronting 
us. The very working together upon these would be as 
valuable as the large amount of work that so easily might 
be done. 

Education ! Word of lamentable memories. The present 
Bill, which all Christian bodies have urged on, left in 
despair the vital question of religious teaching until the 
Churches can agree upon it among themselves. With all 
the lessons of the war, both to the appalling need of such 
teaching, and of the necessity of bigger thinking, can 
they not do it now? Here is a critical field for cooperation 
and self -suppression. Only let the younger men be put 
to the task. The elder will be the first to admit that long 
controversy and deepening opposition have unfitted them 
for sincere agreement. The younger men are fresh, and 
start with an eagerness to find the way out. 

(d) Cooperation in these great matters will not only 
promote unity, but display already the men of Christ as 
one before the world. But it is not enough. How about 
cooperation in directly religious work and worship? 
" The visible unity of the Body of Christ is not adequately 
expressed in the cooperation for moral influence and social 
service, though such cooperation might with advantage 
be carried much further than it is at present ; it could only 
be fully realised through community of worship, faith 
and order, including common participation in the Lord's 
Supper 1." 

^ Quoted from the Second Interim Report of the Archbishops' 
Committee and the representatives of the Free Church Com- 
missions. 



46 Unity between Christian Denominations 

Here let us once more and finally insist that the all- 
• important thing is the development of the desire for 
Unity even in the most local, or uneducated, or out-of- 
the-way congregations. Most of the clergy now are 
revolutionaries for better, bigger things; but, frankly, 
we fear the lay people who hate change, and desire things 
to remain as they are — in church and out of it. That is 
why I should so like my imagined Council to set going 
my imagined National Mission of Love. But much can 
. be done besides. Those who seek unity will be labouring 
fruitfully for it, if they simply devote themselves to 
developing social and Christian friendship between 
Churchmen and Nonconformists in town and village. 
There might well be an enormous growth of meetings, 
both of clergy and laity of different denominations, for 
conference, devotion, even retreat. We want more than 
one "Swanwick." Can we not go further, and draw to- 
gether by experimenting with each other's devotions or 
organisations of proved value? For instance, I wonder if 
it is suggesting too much, to suggest that if Nonconfor- 
mists appropriated with vigour our Christian year, they 
would be sharers with us of a devotional joy and help, 
which would certainly promote spiritual sympathy. In 
the same way, the Church of England has been crying 
out for some method of using the spiritual gifts of her 
laymen in church. Why not borrow notions from those 
who know how to do it? 

These are but scrappy examples of ways by which right 

spirit can be developed within the single communion, or 

between separated bodies. The right spirit won, the whole 

battle is won. 

Naturally there are many who desire already to go 



E. MiLNER- White 47 

much further and faster. Intercommunion, our goal, is 
of course impossible at this stage owing to seriously 
differing convictions on faith and order ; and the plain fact 
that it would cause more cleavage than it healed. But 
how about interchange of pulpits? The Evangelicals at 
Cheltenham demanded this as a regular practice. The 
rest of the Church feels strongly that the time for this 
has not arrived yet ; that haphazard invitations by indi- 
vidual vicars to ministers of convictions widely different 
are undesirable. The time has come for conference, but 
not yet for any facile overpassing of the facts and 
reasons for historical separations. Nor do we want to 
run the risks of indiscipline and disorderliness resulting 
from such individual action. The Church of England can 
only be of help to the cause of unity where she acts as 
a whole. Matters such as interchange of pulpits should 
be tackled by our suggested Council of Unity. A sugges- 
tion in the Challenge of July 19 might well be favourably 
considered by it. There are Nonconformists of acknow- 
ledged eminence, learning, and inspiration, from whose 
books the Church of England already has received much. 
We should all be glad to receive hkewise from their lips. 
If a selected number were officially invited by the 
Church to prophesy in our midst, an immense and 
rehgiously fruitful step would have been taken, in perfect 
order. The plan might well be reciprocal. 

The same leading article proposed that ministers of 
other denominations should be asked by such congrega- 
tions as wished, to come and explain to them frankly 
their standpoints of doctrine and order. I am sure that 
all communions might be, and now should be, more 
brave in explaining themselves to each other. The gain in 



48 Unity between Christian Denominations 

preventing misunderstanding and destroying suspicion 
and unfriendliness would be great, and I can see no loss 
anywhere about such a proceeding. 

Have you read the story of the Woolwich Crusade, 
published by the S.P.C.K. (is. 3^.)? The Crusade move- 
ment and method is a new thing. Its idea is not that of a 
mission — to increase or improve the membership of a 
particular denomination, but to bring God and the 
meaning of Christ into the life and problems of to-day. 
It is doing the same sort of work which chaplains in 
France do, among the munitioners, artisans, and labour 
world at home. Perhaps our Nonconformist brethren 
could join us here. The difficulties would, I think, merely 
be those of organisation. 

Thanks to the College system, and to the Student 
Christian movement, Churchmen and Nonconformists 
are as friendly in this University as they are in France; 
and joint devotion is usual. We have a great responsi- 
bility here amid the young and the enthusiastic, and 
good feeling is both easier to achieve, and more wide- 
spread in result, at a University than anywhere else. 
Well, we are awake to our chances, and will do our best. 

(e) This leaves but one more subject to touch on: the 
old, hard, question of Church order, and the orders of 
ministry. But all looks in the best sense hopeful here, 
very hopeful, since the striking report signed by the 
thirteen members of the sub-committee appointed by the 
Archbishops' Committee, and by representatives of the 
English Free Churches' Commissions. Let me quote it. 

Looking as frankly and as widely as possible at the whole 
situation, we desire with a due sense of responsibility to submit 
for the serious consideration of all the parts of a divided Christen- 



E. MiLNER- White 49 

dom what seem to us the necessary conditions of any possibiUty 
of reunion : That continuity with the historic Episcopate should be 
effectively preserved. That, in order that the rights and responsi- 
bilities of the whole Christian community in the government of 
the Church may be adequately recognised, the Episcopate should 
reassume a constitutional form both as regards the method of the 
election of the Bishop as by clergy and people, and the method of 
government after election. . . . The acceptance of the fact of 
Episcopacy and not any theory as to its character should be all 
that is asked for. ... It would no doubt be necessary before any 
arrangement for corporate reunion could be made to discuss the 
exact functions which it may be agreed to recognise as belonging 
to the Episcopate, but we think this can be left to the future. 

The acceptance of Episcopacy on these terms should not involve 
any Christian community in the necessity of disowning its past, 
but should enable all to maintain the continuity of their witness 
and influence as heirs and trustees of types of Christian thought, 
life, and order, not only of value to themselves, but of value to the 
Church as a whole. . . . 

It would be difficult to imagine a wiser, braver, or 
happier statement than this in the whole history of the 
Church. A landmark indeed ! The Chaplains to the Forces 
in France almost shouted for joy. At one stroke, the 
first and greatest incompatibility of conviction has been 
cleared out of the way. Perhaps that is too strong — or 
prophetic — a way of putting it. Let us say rather, that 
at least the question of Episcopacy and Church order 
has been raised to a new plane, where all can discuss it, 
and think it out, not only peaceably, but with good hope 
of new wealth of conception and polity pouring into the 
old, rigid, bitter, rival views of church government. In 
France I corresponded with a Wesleyan chaplain on the 
subject of orders and ordination. He wrote a careful 
letter affirming the historic Nonconformist position about 
ministry. But, he ended, it would all be changed, if 
re-ordination could be presented and accepted as a great 

C. E. L. 4 



50 Unity between Christian Denominations 

outward "Sacrament of Love" which reunited us. That 
is more than the Church of England has ever asked, for 
she regards ordination as a Sacrament of Order merely, 
not of Spiritual Love. But let us gladly put the higher 
value upon it. And the day will surely come, unless 
goodhearted Christians settle down to accept the intoler- 
able burden of permanent separation in communion and 
worship, when this Sacrament of Love be celebrated, 
and the Church of England ordains the Free Church 
ministry, and the Free Churches commission us, to work 
each and all in the flocks that have been made one 
Fold. 



UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN 
DENOMINATIONS 

III. THE PROBLEM OF THE ENGLISH 
FREE CHURCHES 

By the Rev. W. B. Selbie, M.A., D.D. 

While I think that what I say may be fairly taken to 
represent the general mind of these churches it must be 
understood that I do not in any way commit them but 
speak only for myself. I propose first to recall the cir- 
cumstances which gave rise to these churches and the 
conditions which still operate in maintaining them as 
separate Christian bodies, and then to give some account 
of the various movements towards reunion in which they 
have taken part. The Baptists and Congregationalists you 
will remember arose at a time when membership in the 
Anglican Church was a formal and perfunctory thing. It 
was open to every parishioner and meant very little in the 
way of Christian life or witness. The first Nonconformists 
stood for the principle that membership in Christian 
churches should be confined to genuinely Christian people, 
and in order to secure this they formed separated churches, 
on the New Testament model, of those who were able to 
give effective witness of their Christian calling. That 
such churches should be self-governed followed almost 
as a matter of course. Their meeting in the name of 

4—2 



52 Unity between Christian Denominations 

Christ secured His presence among them and the guidance 
of His spirit in their doings. But it is always important 
to remember that their essential characteristic is not 
either democracy in church government or dissent from 
the Establishment, but the positive witness to purity of 
membership and to the sole headship of Jesus Christ 
just described. The Wesley an Church, the parent of the 
whole great Methodist movement, aroSe at the end of 
the i8th century from somewhat similar reasons. There 
was never anything schismatic in the spirit of John 
Wesley, but when he found that the rigour and stiffness 
of Anglicanism made a free spiritual witness almost 
impossible, he was driven, like the Nonconformists of 
the Elizabethan times, to set up separate churches. 
While it is quite true that the great principle for which 
English Nonconformity has stood is now almost univer- 
sally accepted, and that what may be called the negative 
witness of the Free Churches is much less necessary than 
it used to be, there is still room for their positive contri- 
bution to the religious life of the country, for their 
witness to freedom, spirituality, and the rights of the 
people in the Church. For a long time, no doubt, they 
did rejoice in the dissidence of their dissent, and they 
suffered, and still suffer, to some degree, from a Pharisaic 
feeling of superiority to those whom they regard as 
bound by tradition and State rule. The great majority 
among them, however, have long since come to feel that 
they have more in common with one another and with 
many in the Anglican Church than they have been hitherto 
prepared to admit, and that existence in isolation from 
the rest of Christendom is neither good for them nor 
helpful to the cause of Christ and His Kingdom. This 



W. B. Selbie 5-3 

feeling first took definite shape about the year 1890 in 
connexion with what are now known as the Grindelwald 
Conferences. For three successive years informal parties 
of clergy and ministers were arranged by Sir Henry Lunn, 
at Grindelwald and Lucerne, with the object of getting 
representatives of the different churches together in order 
to exchange views on the subject of union, and to create 
an atmosphere of mutual knowledge, sympathy, and 
friendliness. Although no practical steps directly followed 
them, these conferences undoubtedly did good by remov- 
ing misunderstandings and paving a way for further 
intercourse. To many of the Free Churchmen who 
attended them they seem to have suggested for the first 
time the evils of our unhappy divisions, and they cer- 
tainly created a desire for better relations. It became 
obvious that one of the necessary first steps in this 
direction would be the setting up of a closer cooperation 
among the Free Churches themselves, and of breaking 
down the denominational isolation in which they too 
often lived. Further conferences were held in England at 
Manchester, Bradford, London and other centres, the 
ultimate issue of which was the foundation of the National 
Federation of the Evangelical Free Churches under the 
guidance of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Dr Berry of 
Wolverhampton, Dr Mackennal of Bowdon, and Dr 
Munro Gibson of London, along with laymen Hke Sir 
Percy Bunting and Mr George Cadbury. The aim of the 
Federation was to bring all the evangelical Nonconfor- 
mist churches into closer association in order that they 
might in various localities take concerted action on 
questions affecting their common faith and interests and 
the social, moral, and religious welfare of the community. 



54 Unity between Christian Denominations 

Since that time the work of the Federation has gradually 
covered the whole country through local councils working 
on a Free Church parish system, and engaging in various 
forms of social and evangelistic effort. The representative 
central council has become a powerful instrument for 
furthering the cause of the Free Churches and for bringing 
their influence to bear on social and political matters. 
It must be freely admitted that this council has some- 
times gone further in political action than some of the 
churches have been altogether prepared for. From the 
first, so representative a Nonconformist as the late DrDale 
of Birmingham stood aloof from it, on the ground that 
it tended to divert the energy of the churches from the 
proper channels and to involve them too deeply in political 
controversy. In this action he was supported by many of 
the more conservative elements in the churches them- 
selves, particularly as the circumstances of the time com- 
pelled the council to engage in a good deal of political 
agitation. In spite of this, however, there is no doubt 
that the Free Church Council movement as a whole has 
had the effect its first promoters intended and desired, 
and has brought all the Free Churches into much closer 
relations with one another, and has established them in 
a position of mutual understanding and sympathy. Its 
chief weakness has been that it has depended for support 
on individual churches rather than on the denominations 
they represented. It is the consciousness of this which has 
led the way to a later movement in the direction of still 
closer federation. The lead has been taken by the Rev. 
J. H. Shakespeare, who, as President of the Free Church 
Council in igi6, propounded an elaborate scheme for the 
federation of the Free Church denominations. In his first 



W. B. Selbie 55 

presidential address under the title "The Free Churches 
at the Cross-roads " he put forward an unanswerable case 
for the union of the whole of the Free Churches of England. 
He pointed to the fact that for many years past these 
churches have suffered a serious decline in the number 
of their members and of their Sunday school scholars 
and teachers ; and he found one of the chief causes of this 
in their excessive denominationalism, which led to over- 
lapping and rivalry. He pleaded that the old sectarian 
distinctions had now ceased to represent vital issues, 
and to appeal to the best elements both in the churches 
and in the nation outside; and he urged that the main- 
tenance of these distinctions now tended to destroy the 
collective witness of the Free Churches and involved an 
immense waste of men, money and energy. For the sake 
of efficiency, as well as in order to maintain a proper 
Christian comity, he argued that it was absolutely 
necessary to put an end to this condition of things. As 
long as the Free Churches were thus divided; they could 
not expect either to do their own work well or to exercise 
their proper influence in the life of the nation. There is 
no doubt that this estimate of the situation represented 
a growing feeling among those who were best acquainted 
with the facts. But it is probable that Mr Shakespeare 
under-estimated the strength of the conservative spirit 
in many of the Free Churches. And there is no doubt that 
a considerable educational process will have to be gone 
through before his proposals take practical shape. This 
process, however, has already begun and has made con- 
siderable way. Mr Shakespeare's challenge led almost 
immediately to the formation of a large conference of 
representatives appointed by the Free Church Council 



56 Unity between Christian Denominations 

along with the Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, 
Primitive Methodist, Independent Methodist, Wesleyan 
Methodist, Wesleyan Reform, United Methodist, Mora- 
vian, Countess of Huntingdon, and Disciples of Christ 
Churches. This Conference first met at Mansfield College, 
Oxford, in September, 1916, and later at the Leys School, 
Cambridge, in 1917, and again in London in the early part 
of this year. It appointed Committees on Faith, Consti- 
tution, Evangehzation and the Ministry, all of which have 
held many meetings in addition to those of the whole 
Conference. The Committee on Faith was able to frame 
a declaratory statement on doctrine which was afterwards 
unanimously adopted as follows : 

I 

There is One Living and True God, Who is revealed to us as 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Him alone we worship and adore. 

II 

We believe that God so loved the world as to give His Son to 
be the Revealer of the Father and the Redeemer of mankind; 
that the Son of God, for us men and for our salvation, became 
man in Jesus Christ, Who, having lived on earth the perfect 
human life, died for our sins, rose again from the dead, and now 
is exalted Lord over all ; and that the Holy Spirit, Who witnesses 
to us of Christ, makes the salvation which is in Him to be effective 
in our hearts and lives. 

Ill 

We acknowledge that all men are sinful, and unable to deliver 
themselves from either the guilt or power of their sin ; but we have 
received and rejoice in the Gospel of the grace of the Holy God, 
wherein all who truly turn from sin are freely forgiven through 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and are called and enabled, through 
the Spirit dwelling and working within them, to live in fellowship 
with God and for His service ; amd in this new life, which is to be 
nurtured by the right use of the means of grace, we are to grow, 
daily dying unto sin and living unto Him Who in His mercy has 
redeemed us. 



W. B. Selbie 57 

IV 

We believe that the Catholic or Universal Church is the whole 
company of the redeemed in heaven and on earth, and we recog- 
nise as belonging to this holy fellowship all who are united to God 
through faith in Christ. 

The Church on earth — which is One through the Apostolic 
Gospel and through the living union of all its true members with 
its one Head, even Christ, and which is Holy through the indwelling 
Holy Spirit Who sanctifies the Body and its members — is or- 
dained to be the visible Body of Christ, to worship God through 
Him, to promote the fellowship of His people and the ends of His 
Kingdom, and to go into all the world and proclaim His Gospel 
for the salvation of men and the brotherhood of all mankind. Of 
this visible Church, and every branch thereof, the only Head is 
the Lord Jesus Christ ; and in its faith, order, discipline and duty, 
it must be free to obey Him alone as it interprets His holy will. 

V 

We receive, as given by the Lord to His Church on earth, the 
Holy Scriptures, the Sacraments of the Gospel, and the Christian 
Ministry. 

The Scriptures, deUvered through men moved by the Holy 
Ghost, record and interpret the revelation of redemption, and 
contain the sure Word of God concerning our salvation and all 
things necessary thereto. Of this we are convinced by the witness 
of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men to and with the Word ; and 
this Spirit, thus speaking from the Scriptures to believers and to 
the Church, is the supreme Authority by which all opinions in 
rehgion are finally to be judged. 

The Sacraments — Baptism and the Lord's Supper — are in- 
stituted by Christ, Who is Himself certainly and really present 
in His own ordinances (though not bodily in the elements thereof), 
and are signs and seals of His Gospel not to be separated there- 
from. They confirm the promises and gifts of salvation, and, when 
rightly used by believers with faith and prayer, are, through the 
operation of the Holy Spirit, true means of grace. 

The Ministry is an office within the Church — not a sacerdotal 
order — instituted for the preaching of the Word, the ministration 
of the Sacraments and the care of souls. It is a vocation from God, 
upon which therefore no one is qualified to enter save through the 
call of the Holy Spirit in the heart; and this inward call is to be 
authenticated by the call of the Church, which is followed by 



58 Unity between Christian Denominations 

ordination to the work of the Ministry in the name of the Church. 
While thus maintaining the Ministry as an office, we do not limit 
the ministries of the New Testament to those who are thus 
ordained, but affirm the priesthood of all believers and the 
obligation resting upon them to fulfil their vocation according to 
the gift bestowed upon them by the Holy Spirit. 

VI 

We affirm the sovereign authority of our Lord Jesus Christ over 
every department of human hfe, and we hold that individuals and 
peoples are responsible to Him in their several spheres and are 
bound to render Him obedience and to seek always the further- 
ance of His Kingdom upon earth, not, however, in any way con- 
straining behef, imposing religious disabilities, or denying the 
rights of conscience. 

VII 

In the assurance, given us in the Gospel, of the love of God our 
Father to each of us and to all men, and in the faith that Jesus 
Christ, Who died, overcame death and has passed into the heavens, 
the first-fruits of them that sleep, we are made confident of the 
hope of Immortahty, and trust to God our souls and the souls of 
the departed. We believe that the whole world must stand before 
the final Judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, with glad and 
solemn hearts, we look for the consummation and bUss of the life 
everlasting, wherein the people of God, freed for ever from sorrow 
and from sin, shall serve Him and see His face in the perfected 
communion of all saints in the Church triumphant. 

The Committee on Constitution recommended a definite 
union of the Free Church denominations on the basis of 
a federation which should express their essential unity, 
promote evangelization, maintain their liberties and take 
action where authorised in all matters affecting the 
interests, duties, rights, and privileges of the federating 
churches, and to enter into communion and united action 
where possible with other branches of the church of 
Christ throughout the world. It is proposed that the 
federation shall work through a council consisting of 



W. B. Selbie 59 

about 200 representatives of the denominations in order 
to carry out their will. The Committee on Evangelization 
and the Ministry also suggested certain practical measures 
necessary for cooperation in these important branches 
of service. The scheme has been carefully thought out and 
elaborated, but at the same time is not too cumbrous for 
action, and if it can be carried out there is no doubt that 
it would secure the ends aimed at. In many ways the 
doctrinal declaration is the most important part of it, and 
shews a sufficient general agreement on essentials to en- 
sure harmonious working. The fate of it lies of course with 
the different denominations concerned. By this time most 
of them have had an opportunity of considering it and, 
generally speaking, it has met with a favourable reception. 
The Baptists, Congregationalists, and United Methodists 
have declared their wilHngness to proceed to closer union 
on this basis. But the Presbyterians and Wesleyan 
Methodists have referred it back for further consideration. 
Rightly and naturally both of these denominations are 
more concerned for the moment with measures for union 
within their own borders. The Presbyterians are looking 
to a reunion of the Established and Free Churches in 
Scotland, while a great scheme for the reunion of all the 
Methodist bodies is before the Wesleyan Conference. If 
this can be carried out it should not prejudice but rather 
be in favour of any scheme for wider Free Church Union. 
Nothing that has been done so far among the Free 
Churches is likely in any way to hinder the fulfilment of 
the desire which is now widely felt on all sides for better 
relations with the Anglican Church. It can easily be under- 
stood from the difficulties that have already emerged in 
the way of closer union among the Free Churches how 



6o Unity between Christian Denominations 

much more difficult is the prospect of union with 
AngHcanism. There is no doubt that denominational 
feeling is still very strong among the rank and file of the 
churches. In spite of the changes which have taken place 
in emphasis and conditions in modern church thought, 
each denomination realises that it stands for something 
positive and is anxious to give its positive witness in the 
best possible way. It has therefore been an essential of 
reunion that any scheme proposed shall not interfere 
with the autonomy of any individual denomination and 
shall allow full scope for its genius. It is equally necessary 
that this should be preserved in any scheme contemplated 
for reunion with Anglicanism. The Free Churches are 
not disposed to bate anything of their freedom or to sink 
their identity in any national church. If, however, any 
scheme can be devised which will preserve their indi- 
viduality and give them scope for their special witness 
and at the same time avoid the dissensions and divisions 
which have so marred their relations with Anglicanism 
in the past it is likely to meet with a very warm welcome. 
The war has brought home to all thinking men in the 
churches the imperative need that there is for closer 
union and for a more united testimony. And they are 
conscious that if they are to face the increasing difficulties 
of the future all the churches must be able to stand 
together, to cooperate in Christian service, and to speak 
with one voice. 

It is therefore regarded by them as a welcome sign of 
the times that there should be a world-wide desire for 
Christian reunion, and that this should have begun to 
take practical shape just before the outbreak of the war. 
The movement was initiated by the Protestant Episcopal 



W. B. Selbie 6 1 

Church of America supported by practically all the 
churches in that country. It first took shape in proposals 
for a world-wide conference on Faith and Order with a 
view of promoting the visible unity of the body of Christ. 
But for the war this conference would have been held 
already, but under existing circumstances the work has 
had to be confined to preparations for it on both sides of 
the Atlantic. In this country the work has been mainly 
done by a joint Conference, consisting of representatives 
of the Committee appointed by the Archbishops of 
Canterbury and York, and of commissions appointed by 
the various Free Churches, in order to promote the Faith 
and Order movement. This Conference has held repeated 
meetings in the historic Jerusalem Chamber at West- 
minster and elsewhere, and has published two interim 
reports "Towards Christian Unity" which are of the 
utmost importance. These reports represent the work of 
a sub-committee but have received the general sanction 
of the whole Conference. The first report contains the 
following statement of agreement on matters of faith, 
which is "offered not as a creed for subscription, or as 
committing in any way the churches thus represented, 
but as indicating a large measure of substantial agree- 
ment and also as affording material for further investi- 
gation and consideration " : 

A Statement of Agreement on Matters of Faith 

We, who belong to different Christian Communions and are 
engaged in the discussion of questions of Faith and Order, desire 
to afi&rm our agreement upon certain foundation truths as the 
basis of a spiritual and rational creed and life for all mankind. 
We express them as follows : 

( I ) As Christians we believe that, while there is some knowledge 
of God to be found among all races of men and some measure of 



62 Unity between Christian Denominations 

divine grace and help is present to all, a unique, progressive and 
redemptive revelation of Himself was given by God to the Hebrew 
people through the agency of inspired prophets, "in many parts and 
in many manners," and that this revelation reaches its culmination 
and completeness in One Who is more than a prophet. Who is the 
Incarnate Son of God, our Saviour and our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

(2) This distinctive revelation, accepted as the word of God, is 
the basis of the life of the Christian Church and is intended to be 
the formative influence upon the mind and character of the 
individual believer. 

(3) This word of God is contained in the Old and New Testa- 
ments and constitutes the permanent spiritual value of the Bible. 

(4) The root and centre of this revelation, as intellectually 
interpreted, consists in a positive and highly distinctive doctrine 
of God — His nature, character and will. From this doctrine of 
God follows a certain sequence of doctrines concerning creation, 
human nature and destiny, sin, individual and racial, redemption 
through the incarnation of the Son of God and His atoning death 
and resurrection, the mission and operation of the Holy Spirit, 
the Holy Trinity, the Church, the last things, and Christian life 
and duty, individual and social : all these cohere with and follow 
from this doctrine of God. 

(5) Since Christianity offers an Mstorical revelation of God, 
the coherence and sequence of Christian doctrine involve a 
necessary synthesis of idea and fact such as is presented to us in 
the New Testament and in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds: and 
these Creeds both in their statements of historical fact and in their 
statements of doctrine affirm essential elements of the Christian 
faith as contained in Scripture, which the Church could never 
abandon without abandoning its basis in the word of God. 

(6) We hold that there is no contradiction between the accept- 
ance of the miracles recited in the Creeds and the acceptance of 
the principle of order in nature as assumed in scientific enquiry, 
and we hold equally that the acceptance of miracles is not for- 
bidden by the historical evidence candidly and impartially in- 
vestigated by critical methods. 

This was followed by a statement of agreement on 

matters relating to order as follows : 

With thankfulness to the Head of the Church for the spirit of 
unity He has shed abroad in our hearts we go on to express our 
common conviction on the following matters : 



W. B. Selbie 63 

(i) That it is the purpose of our Lord that beUevers in Him 
should be, as in the beginning they were, one visible society — His 
body with many members — which in every age and place should 
maintain the communion of saints in the unity of the Spirit and 
should be capable of a common witness and a common activity. 

(2) That our Lord ordained, in addition to the preaching of His 
Gospel, the Sacraments of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper, as 
not only declaratory symbols, but also effective channels of His 
grace and gifts for the salvation and sanctification of men, and 
that these Sacraments being essentially social ordinances were 
intended to afhrm the obligation of corporate fellowship as well 
as individual confession of Him. 

(3) That our Lord, in addition to the bestowal of the Holy 
Spirit in a variety of gifts and graces upon the whole Church, also 
conferred upon it by the self-same Spirit a Ministry of manifold 
gifts and functions, to maintain the unity and continuity of its 
witness and work. 

In subsequent discussions a very considerable advance 
was made on the positions here laid down. It was felt 
that if ever reunion was to become a reality the question 
of order must be frankly faced, and the following state- 
ments were put forth for the consideration of the 
churches concerned, not as a final solution, but as the 
necessary basis for discussion in framing a practical 
scheme : 

1. That continuity with the historic Episcopate should be 
effectively preserved. 

2. That in order that the rights and responsibilities of the 
whole Christian community in the government of the Church 
may be adequately recognised, the Episcopate should re-assume 
a constitutional form, both as regards the method of the election 
of the bishop as by clergy and people, and the method of govern- 
ment after election. It is perhaps necessary that we should call to 
mind that such was the primitive ideal and practice of Episcopacy 
and it so remains in many Episcopal communions to-day. 

3. That acceptance of the fact of Episcopacy and not any theory 
as to its character should be all that is asked for. We think that 
this may be the more easily taken for granted as the acceptance 
of any such theory is not now required of ministers of the Church 



64 Unity between Christian Denominations 

of England. It would no doubt be necessary before any arrange- 
ment for corporate reunion could be made to discuss the exact 
functions which it may be agreed to recognise as belonging to the 
Episcopate, but we think this can be left to the future. 

The first point to note in regard to the work of this 
Conference is the remarkable unanimity achieved in 
regard tp Christian doctrine. While there is no intention 
of binding any of the parties to the ipsissima verba of 
any doctrinal declaration, but rather every desire to 
allow for varieties of expression, it is now perfectty clear 
that there is among all the churches concerned a sub- 
stantial agreement on the main and essential matters of 
the Christian faith. This supplies the most real and 
hopeful basis for the vital union of churches thus minded, 
and makes thejr continued " separation and antagonism 
intolerable. The more closely this aspect of the situation 
is explored the more clearly does it lead to the conclusion 
that those who are so largely one in aim, intention, and 
desire should find some genuine and practical expression 
of their unity. The question of church order is more 
difficult; but here again much has happened of late to 
justify a reconsideration of the position on both sides. 
On the one hand recent investigations into early church 
history have shewn that no one form of church govern- 
ment can claim exclusive scriptural or Apostolic authority. 
Under the guidance of the Spirit of God the Church has 
in the past adapted herself and her organization to the 
needs of the times in order the better to do the work of 
the Kingdom. Men are coming now to see that the test 
of a true Church is not conformity to type but effective- 
ness in fulfilling the will of her Lord, and that therefore 
organization need not be of a single uniform type. So 



W. B. Selbie 65 

we find denominations like the Baptists and Congrega- 
tionalists setting up superintendents (overseers, Bishops) 
over their churches because the needs of the time de- 
mand such supervision. And on the other hand we find 
Anghcans incHning to exchange prelacy for a more 
modest and elective form of episcopacy. In this respect 
the two extremes are drawing together to an extent 
which would have been incredible twenty years ago, and, 
given good will, it should be possible to find even here a 
real modus vivendi. 

The same may be said with regard to other movements 
which have been recently set on foot in the direction of 
a better common understanding between Anglicans and 
Free Churchmen. It is recognised that one of the greatest 
obstacles is still the so-called religious education contro- 
versy. Both sides are becoming a little ashamed of their 
attitude to this question in the past. They realise that 
the true interests of education have been gravely im- 
perilled by making it a bone of contention among the 
churches, and they are beginning to look at the whole 
matter afresh from the point of view of the good of the 
child rather than from that of their denominational 
interests. Some important conferences have been held at 
Lambeth in the course of which the Bishop of Oxford has 
put forth a scheme for relegating the conduct of rehgious 
teaching in the elementary schools to interdenominational 
committees elected ad hoc. This scheme is still under dis- 
cussion and at the moment is not regarded very favour- 
ably by extremists on either side, but it is all to the good 
that the matter should have been raised in so friendly and 
concihatory a spirit and, whenever the time is ripe, it 

c. E. L. 5 



66 Unity between Christian Denominations 

may be hoped that the way to agreement will be more 
open than it has ever been yet. 

Further the rise and rapid growth of the Life and 
Liberty movement within the Established Church is 
something like a portent and one that Nonconformists 
cannot but regard with the deepest interest and sympathy. 
They may perhaps be forgiven if they see in it an attempt 
to win from within the Church just those privileges and 
liberties for the sake of which their ancestors came out 
many years ago. With a great price they bought this 
freedom and they rejoice in this new movement as a real 
vindication of the cause for which they have so long 
contended and as representing a body of opinion within 
the establishment the existence of which, whatever may 
be its immediate result,- is sure to make a common under- 
standing in the future more attainable. They may have 
serious doubts whether the aims of the movement are 
ever to be obtained without the Disestablishment of the 
Church, but for all that they wish it well and rejoice in 
the spirit to which it points. 

One more sign of the times may be mentioned. During 
the last 1 8 months yet another Conference has been 
set on foot, this time between Nonconformists and 
Evangelical Anglicans, and has come very near to a 
common understanding on such vital matters as inter- 
communion and interchange of pulpits. It is recognised 
that there can be no real Christian unity without such 
interchange, and the fact that a growing number of 
Anglican clergy are prepared to discuss the question and 
that there is no real difficulty on the Nonconformist side is 
again a ground of hope. It should be understood however 
that on the Nonconformist side there is no desire for 



W. B. Selbie 67 

universal and indiscriminate facilities in the directions 
indicated. They do not want a kind of general post 
among the pulpits of the land, nor do they ask that their 
people should desert their own ordinances for those of 
the Established Church. Their people indeed have no 
such desire. They love the simplicity and homeliness of 
their own communion services and would not exchange 
them if they could. But they do feel that to be debarred 
from communicating when there is no church of their 
own order available is a real hardship, and they know 
that nothing would make for comity among the churches 
so surely as an occasional interchange of pulpits. They 
recognise that it would all have to be carried out in due 
order and under conditions, and as long as the conditions 
cast no reflexion on their orders, or on the Christian 
standing of their members, they would loyally accept them. 
Under exceptional circumstances and given due authori- 
zation on both sides, it might be possible to do openly what 
is often now done in a more or less clandestine way. There 
is a growing body of opinion on both sides which would be 
favourable to such a course and it is certain that more 
will be heard of it after the war. 

This leads up to another consideration which our 
ecclesiastical authorities would do well to bear in mind. 
For a long time past younger men and women in all the 
churches have been accustomed to meet together in the 
various Fellowships and the Student movement. They 
have learnt to work and pray together, to know one 
another's mind and to realise their fundamental oneness 
of spirit and aim. It must be remembered that these are 
the men and women in whose hands the future of the 
churches, humanly speaking, lies, and they will not 

5— a 



68 Unity between Christian Denominations 

tolerate an indefinite prospect of sectarian division and 
strife. While loyal to their own denominations they have 
seen a wider and more glorious vision, and they are 
already prepared for very definite steps in the direction 
of closer relations. The new and better spirit which they 
represent is spreading rapidly among the rank and file 
in the churches, and has been strongly reinforced by 
experiences at the front. There, under the rude stress of 
war, denominational exclusiveness has frankly broken 
down and attempts to maintain it have excited universal 
resentment and disgust. There is no doubt that after the 
war there will be a strong public opinion in favour of 
better relations among the churches, and no church or 
section of a church that clings to the old exclusiveness 
will be able to retain any hold upon the people. In this 
case at least it may be assumed that for once vox populi 
is vox dei. 

There is indeed every reason to believe that opinion 
outside the churches is more ripe for action than within 
them. On both sides there is need for something like an 
educational campaign on the subject of reunion and of 
the duty of Christians in regard to it. Difficulties have 
to be faced of a very serious kind. On the Nonconformist 
side there are still many who feel very keenly the burden 
of the disabilities from which they have suffered, and to 
some extent still suffer. They know that in some country 
districts Nonconformists are subjected to petty social 
persecutions, and that their boys or girls who wish to 
become elementary school teachers are handicapped from 
the outset. Many of them have been brought up on bitter 
memories, and their inherited hostility to the State 
establishment of religion does not incline them to any 



W. B. Selbie 69 

rapprochement with its representatives. It is well that 
these facts should be faced, for they shew the need there 
is for the Free Churches to educate their own people. 

To all this we have to add the vis inertiae which operates 
in all the churches alike. Many of them are entirely 
satisfied with things as they are, and are only anxious 
that we should let well alone. There is too among certain 
of the denominations a self-satisfaction amounting almost 
to Pharisaism. They are very busy with their own work 
and devoted to their denominational interests, and, so 
long as these can be maintained, they do not see the use 
of agitations for reunion. They do not believe that they 
have anything to gain from it and therefore they let it 
alone. 

The same spirit shews itself too on the Anglican side 
and there becomes a serious obstacle to any advance. 
There are those who regard the Church of England, as by 
law established, as the only possible Church for England, 
and they cannot imagine why any people should want to 
change its present position. Dissenters they say are out- 
siders and schismatics, and must be left to go their own 
way. They should be thankful for the toleration which 
has been extended to them and not abuse it by asking 
for more. For all this kind of thing there is only one 
remedy, and that is a wider vision, and for this all 
Christians of good will should strenuously work and pray. 
It should surely be obvious that we can no longer treat 
any church or denomination as an end in itself. All alike 
exist for the great end of the Kingdom of God and are 
to be judged by their efficiency in promoting that end 
among men. So no system of church order can be re- 
garded as of divine right in itself but only so far as it 



7© Unity between Christian Denominations 

becomes a channel of the Spirit of God and mediates His 
gifts to men. All the churches as we know them to-day 
have grown up in controversy and represent a long 
process of development and adaptation. If we are to 
test them it should not be by the more or less artificial 
standards of any one age in their history, but rather by 
the spirit, and temper, and intentions of their Lord and 
Master Jesus Christ. When this is done, the differences 
between them fall into their proper proportions in view 
of the failure which is common to them all. On these 
terms too will the old antagonisms become a generous 
rivalry in good works and each church be ready to seek 
the welfare of others in the common interests of the 
Kingdom which they all serve. 

So far we have dealt largely with the past and with 
the various movements in the direction of unity which 
have been set on foot. It now remains to say something 
of the motives which inspire and the principles which 
underlie them. First and foremost is the fact that it is 
the will of our Lord that His people should be one. This 
does not mean surely any mere uniformity of organiza- 
tion but unity of spirit, heart, and will. We seek this 
chiefly because it is a right thing. Anything short of it 
is evil. The Christian faith rests ultimately on the 
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and 
these can only be made real when all Christians accept 
them and make them the ground and basis of their 
relations with one another. Here we need to appeal to 
the conscience of the churches and challenge them to^ 
put the first things first and learn in the love of the 
brethren the love and service of God and His Church. 
Then we are bound to recognise in the next place that 



W. B. Selbie 71 

this unity is the prime condition of successful work and 
witness. The tasks awaiting the churches in the immediate 
future are gigantic and only as they stand together and 
learn to speak and act as one have they any chance of 
accomplishing them. They have to evangelize the world, 
and for this they will need above all things a common 
faith, a common witness, and a common sacrifice. They 
have to leaven society with the aims and principles of 
Jesus Christ, to bring His spirit to bear on all social, 
political, commercial, and industrial undertakings, and 
for this too they will need the united weight of all their 
influence and the passion of a great common crusade. 
The devil is a great master of strategy and knows that 
if he can keep our forces divided there is nothing in them 
that need be feared. We must therefore close up our 
ranks and present a united front, not merely as a measure 
of self-preservation but in order to do well the work that 
has been committed to us. This will involve some real 
self-sacrifice on the part of us all, but it is the way the 
Master went and His followers must not shrink from it. 
If we but keep our eyes fixed on the great vision of the 
Kingdom which He opened before us, we shall not faint 
but go forward steadfastly and together until the king- 
doms of this world have become the Kingdom of God 
and of His Christ. 



UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN 
DENOMINATIONS 

III. THE SCOTTISH PROBLEM 

By the Very Rev. James Cooper, D.D., 
Litt.D., D.C.L., V.D. 

The very appearance of this subject on the programme 
of the Cambridge Summer Meeting, and still more the 
fact that it has been entrusted to ministers of different 
Christian denominations — one of them, too, from across 
the Border — are signs of a remarkable change that has 
come over — we may say — -the whole Christian people of 
Great Britain. 

Our island was, till not so long ago, emphatically a 
land of different, and diverging "churches " and "denomi- 
nations," unashamed of their separation; nay, boasting 
their exclusiveness, or their dissidence, commemorating 
with pride their secessions and disruptions. And even 
when they began to see something of the evils such tem- 
pers and such acts had brought in their train — the 
wastefulness of them, in regard alike to money, to 
men's toil, and gifts given by God for the use of the 
whole Church but confined in their exercise to some 
small section; — the injury to character, the multiform 
self -righteousness engendered by our schisms, the breaches 
of Christian justice and charity; — the treatment of that 
whole Mediaeval Period to which we owe so much, as if 



James Cooper 73 

it had been one dark age of heathen bHndness; — and, 
again, the hindrances to Christian work at home and 
especially abroad, — when uneasiness over these results 
began to shew itself, the recognition of the evil ex- 
pressed itself at first in ways hardly indicative of any 
depth of penitence, or conducive to any practical measures 
for the healing of the wrong. We had in one quarter 
"Evangelical AlHances," which put a new stigma on huge 
portions of the Church of God, yet left those who took part 
in their meetings contented in their own divisions. In 
other quarters — probably in both the established Churches 
of our island — there was a tendency (and more) to look 
down on Dissenters as such, to ignore even their reasonable 
grievances, to ask more from them than either Holy 
Scripture or early tradition could warrant, and to disparage 
unions that were possible and urgent as likely to put new 
difficulties in the way of that further and perfect union of 
all who believe in Christ which alone He has promised, 
and for which alone He tells us that He prays. 

I should be the very last to deprecate either prayer or 
effort to advance this perfect end. It ought to be the 
ultimate aim of all of us, since it is Christ's. We must do 
nothing to hinder it : we must do all that may be lawful 
for us to promote it. But it should be pointed out to such 
as look exclusively towards the East and Rome, first, that 
a juster view of those great Churches — great gain as it is — 
affords little excuse for ignoring the Churches of the 
Reformation, and for leaving the large numbers of devout 
Christians in the lesser sects without either the hope or 
the means of supplying defects which are now, for the 
most part, rather inherited than chosen; second, that 
the divisions and "variations" among all who in East 



74 Unity between Christian Denominations 

or West, in England or in Scotland, in the nth or the 
i6th century, felt themselves bound to repudiate the 
Papal Supremacy, have supplied, and still supply, the 
Papacy with a chief weapon against all of us alike, and in 
favour of those extreme pretensions which have been a 
chief cause of, and remain a chief obstacle to reunion; 
and third, that nothing is more Ukely to bring about that 
kinder attitude toward the East and us which we 
desiderate on the part of Rome than a large and generous 
measure here and in America of "Home Reunion" — 
effected, of course (as it can only be effected), on the basis 
of the Catholic Creeds, a worship in the beauty of holiness, 
and the Apostolic Ministry. 

Anyhow, this is what we are finding in Scotland. 
Scotland, I know, is but a little bit of the world: its 
largest churches small in comparison with those of 
England and the United States, not to speak of the vast 
communions of Rome and of the East. But the experience 
even of a small part may intimate what may be looked for 
in much larger sections of what after all is essentially the 
same body. For the Church, the Body of Christ, in all 
lands and in all ages is one in spite of its divisions. 
Christ is not divided. It is "subjective unity" not "ob- 
jective" which in the Church on earth is at present, 
through our sins, "suspended." Well, in Scotland; 
where, let me remind you, the confession of Christ alike 
as "King of the Nations" and "King in Zion," and of 
the visible Church as His Kingdom on earth, was never 
laid aside, either in the National Church or in the churches 
which separated from it (we laid aside much that we 
should have done well to keep, but we stuck manfully to 
this) ; we have had within recent times quite a number of 



James Cooper 75 

incorporating .unions; including two of considerable 
note — the union in 1847 which brought together in the 
"United Presbyterian Church" the two main sections of 
our i8th century "Seceders," and the union of 1900 of 
the United Presbyterians with the great mass of the 
"Free Church" of 1843 — the union that has given us the 
"United Free Church." I doubt if to either of these 
unions the hope of a future Catholic Reunion contributed, 
at the time, much or anything. I know there were some in 
the Church of Scotland who fancied, and alleged, that the 
union of 1900 was "engineered" with no friendly purpose 
towards us. But what has been the outcome? Both of 
these unions — ^partial in themselves — have tended, in 
the result, very materially to de-Calvinize (if I may coin 
the word) the general Presbyterianism of Scotland, and 
break down narrow prejudices, to widen the outlook and 
enlarge the sympathies of those who took part in them. 
The second, and greater of these unions, that of 1900 
(suspected then, as I have said), proved, within eight 
short years, to be the very thing to pave the way for the 
opening, between the Church of Scotland and the United 
Free Church, of those official negotiations for an incor- 
porating union which promise now to give us ere long a 
Church of Scotland, not complete, indeed — not embracing 
even all the Presbyterians of Scotland, and greatly needing 
the Scottish Episcopalians — but still a Church which will 
include an immense preponderance of the Scottish people ; 
which will be able to cover the whole country with not 
inadequate organizations ; which will be freer also than it 
is at present to enter into further unions; which will 
remain — what it has ever been — both national and 
orthodox; and will continue, I believe, to go on rapidly 



76 Unity between Christian Denominations 

resuming many of those touching, reverent, and churchly 
usages which in the heats of the i6th and 17th centuries 
it unwisely threw away or, less excusably, gave up in the 
coldness of the i8th. We have still some beautiful old 
usages, as well as enviable liberties and powers. And 
even in' the i8th century we kept the Faith against 
Arian and Socinian heresy: even then, our sacramental 
teaching could be high : even then, the doctrine and the 
practice alike of the Established Church and the Seceders 
were clear and strong on the derivation of the Ministry 
from Christ, and the Apostolical succession of our 
ministers, and yours, through presbyters. 

For myself, I suggested in 1907, when it was proposed 
in our General Assembly to open these negotiations, that 
we should attempt a larger duty, and approach all the 
reformed Churches in Scotland. I was over-ruled. It was 
held wiser "in the meantime" (they gave me this much) 
to "confine our invitation" to the United Free Church. 

The Scottish Episcopal Church appeared to be of this 
mind also ; and those in her and among us who have long 
looked wistfully towards our union with her and with the 
Church of England are already finding that our present 
effort (limited as it is) is proving not an obstacle, as some 
of us feared, but a powerful impetus towards the larger 
effort. The union seems likely to clear away hindrances 
to an extent we never dreamed of. It is opening up the 
wider prospect among an increasing number not in the 
Church of Scotland only, but emphatically also in the 
United Free Church. On all hands it is "recognised" in 
Scotland that the official "limitation of the Union horizon 
is only temporary": — I quote from the Annual Report 
for this year of the Scottish Church Society : 



James Cooper 77 

No one is content to accept the contemplated union, should it 
be accomplished, as exhaustive. We all wait for a fuller mani- 
festation of the Grace of God. At this season of Pentecost we 
dream our dreams and see our visions of that great and notable 
day when all who name the One Name shall be one. 

The witness of the Scottish Church Society may seem to 
some one-sided : here is a witness from the other side, of 
a date more recent than last May; from a pamphlet just 
issued by the venerable Dr William Mair, the first and 
most persevering of the advocates of our present enter- 
prise. His words impress me as very touching in their 
transparent honesty : 

It is thirteen years (he writes) since I first spoke out in the form 
of a pamphlet. No man stood with me. Hard things were said of 
me. I believed it to be the will of the Head of the Church, the 
Lord Jesus Christ, that there should be union of His Church in 
Scotland, and primarily that its two great Churches should be 
one. I have never for a single moment doubted that His will 
would be fulfilled, or that it was the duty of these Churches to 
set themselves, under His guidance, with resolute purpose to 
work out its fulfilment. 

Observe his "primarily": he quite recognises (I have 
his authority for saying so) the further obligation. And 
no wonder: he is clear as to the one great and supreme 
motive that should inspire all efforts for Church Reunion 
— faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the obedience of 
faith which the true confession of His Deity involves. 

The will of the Lord in regard to the visible unity of 
His whole Church is plain : "Other sheep I have which are 
not of this fold: them also I must lead; and they shall 
hear My voice, and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd." 
No doubt there is a difference between a fold (avXij) and a 
flock {iroLfxvrj) , between the racial unity of the Jewish 
Dispensation and the Catholic and international char- 
acter impressed from the beginning on the Christian 



78 Unity between Christian Denominations 

Church. But a flock is as visible as a fold is. We can see 
the one moving along the road under the shepherd's 
guidance just as distinctly as we see the other gleaming 
white on the hillside, or raising its turf-capped walls 
above the level of the moor. We can see, of course, if the 
walls of a fold are broken down; but we can see also 
whether a flock is united, whether it is moving forward 
as one mass, or is broken up and scattered. Such separa- 
tions might be well enough if the different little companies 
were all going quietly on in one way; though even then 
their breaking up would argue on the one hand a por- 
tentous failure in that recognition of the shepherd's voice 
and the obedience to him which is due to his loving care, 
and on the other hand a strange lack of that gregarious- 
ness which is an instinct in the healthy sheep. But what 
if the sheep are seen running hither and thither in different 
directions: if they are found labouring to explain the 
inadvisability — nay, the impossibility — of their ever 
coming into line; if we see them instead crossing each 
other's path, starting from each other, jostling and but- 
ting one another, continually getting into situations 
provocative of fights and injuries? 

Is this the kind of picture which the Lord Jesus has 
drawn of His Flock, His Church as He wishes, and intends, 
that it should be : is this what He promises that it shall be? 

Christ made His Church one at the beginning: the 
rulers He set over it **were all with one accord in one 
place " ; "the multitude of them that believed were of one 
heart and of one soul." And when the Gentiles had been 
brought in, what care did the Apostles take lest the new 
departure should cause a separation along a line made 
obsolete by the Cross of Christ ; arid with what adoring 



James Cooper 79 

admiration does St Paul gaze at the delightful spectacle 
of Jew and Gentile made one new man in Christ Jesus — 
"where," he cries, "there cannot be Greek and Jew, 
circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, 
bondman, freeman, but Christ is all, and in all." 

In matters of rank and race and colour all our denomi- 
nations retain this Apostolic Catholicity. How incon- 
sistent to maintain it there, and repudiate it when we 
come to such differences as mostly separate us 1 These 
are differences far more of temper than of creed, or even 
of worship or government. We say, sometimes, that we 
are "one in spirit": not so; it is just in spirit that we 
have been divided. In creed and organisation both, and 
in temper as well, the Church of Apostolic times was 
visibly one. "See how these Christians love one another" 
was the comment of the heathen onlooker. This state of 
things continued for a long time. Gibbon enumerates 
the Church's "unity and discipline," which go together, 
as among the "secondary causes" of that wonderful 
spread of the Gospel in the first three centuries. 

The revived, broadened, and more candid study, alike 
of the New Testament and of Church History throughout 
its entire course, is one of the ways in which the Good 
Shepherd has been leading us to see alike the disobedience 
of our divisions, and the small foundation there is for 
many of the points over which we have been fighting. 

Happily too, we do not now need to argue in favour of 
visible and organic unity. "The once popular apologies 
for separation which asserted the sufficiency of ' spiritual ' 
union, and the stimulating virtues of rivalry and com- 
petition, have become obsolete." 

More happily still, we have learned practically to 



8o Unity between Christian Denominations 

appreciate the difference between our Saviour's gentle 
/ must lead (Set /xc dyayeti/) and our forefathers' various 
attempts to produce "uniformity" by driving. The 
reproach of that sinful blunder is one that none of our 
greater Churches — Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, or 
Puritan — can cast in another's teeth. Each of us com- 
mitted it in our day of triumph. "What fruit had we 
then in those things whereof we are now ashamed? " The 
memory — one-sided, and carefully cultivated — of what 
each suffered in its turn of adversity has hitherto been 
a potent agency for keeping us apart. To-day those 
memories are fading. I was much struck by a remark I 
heard last spring from the Bishop of Southwark, that one 
reason why we are more ready nowadays to contemplate 
reunion is just that we belong to a generation to whom 
those miserable doings are far-off things outside alike 
our experience and our expectation. 

In other ways also we discern leadings of Our Saviour 
to the same end. 

Through Whitefield and the Wesleys, and the Evan- 
gelical Revival, He re-awakened the peoples of England 
and America to a keen sense of the need for personal 
religion. Where these powerful agencies had the defects 
of their qualities, in their failure to appreciate aright His 
gracious ordinances of Church and Ministry and Sacra- 
ment, He rectified the balance by giving us in due course 
the Oxford Movement, whose force is not "spent," but 
diffused through all our "denominations." Let us be 
just to the Oxford Movement: without it, humanly 
speaking, we should not have been here to-day. If it 
had its own narrownesses, it revived the very studies 
which, while they have revealed the inadequacy of 



James Cooper 8i 

certain of its postulates, have also brought clear into the 
view of all of us the Divine goal which now gleams glorious 
in front of us — the goal of the great Apostle — "the 
building up of the Body of Christ : till we all attain unto 
the unity of the Faith, and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ." 

A Scotsman may be excused for referring to the debt 
which the leaders of the Oxford Movement — Dr Pusey 
in particular was always ready to admit it — owed to 
Sir Walter Scott, particularly in re-awakening a more 
sympathetic interest in the Mediaeval Church. If Sir 
Walter's countrymen were slower to follow him in this 
matter, they are doing so now in unexpected quarters. 
We are full to-day of the American alliance: may I 
remind you that Sir Walter Scott was the first British 
man of letters to hail the early promise of American 
literature by his cordial welcome to its representative, 
Washington Irving? Scott was a devoted subject of the 
British Monarchy; but he saw, and he insisted on, the 
duty of Great Britain to cultivate a warm friendship 
with the United States. 

In the same direction we have been led in days more 
recent by the large development, in all our denomina- 
tions, of two main branches of Christian work. I refer to 
Missionary enterprise abroad and Social service at home. 
Our ecclesiastical divisions are a serious handicap to 
both. In a matter more vital still, that of the Religious 
— the Christian — Education in our Schools and Colleges, 
our divisions have sometimes proved well-nigh fatal. The 
one remedy is that we make up our differences and come 
together. 

C.E.L. 6 



82 Unity between Christian Denominations 

And now this War, so dreadful in itself, is helping 
powerfully, and in many ways, to the same end. It is 
bringing us together at home, and making us acquainted 
with, and appreciative of, each other in a thousand forms 
of united service. It has spread before our eyes the 
magnificent and inspiring spectacles of Colonial loyalty, 
of one military command over the Allied Forces, of the 
cordial and enthusiastic support of a fully-reconciled 
America. Shall "the children of this world be wiser than 
the children of light " ? Shall the Church neglect the lesson 
read to her by the statesmen and the warriors? Then, 
again, the cause for which we are in arms is — most 
happily — not denominational. The present War is not 
in the least like those hateful, if necessary, struggles 
which historians have entitled "The Wars of Religion": 
but it is, on the part of the Entente, essentially and 
fundamentally Christian — more profoundly so than the 
Crusades themselves. That is why it is bringing us so 
markedly together. And, if this is its effect at home and 
in America, much more is it producing the same result 
among our chaplains and our Christian workers at the 
Front. They are finding, on the one hand, the limitations, 
or faults, of every one of our stereotyped methods of 
work and forms of worship ; they are seeing on the other 
hand among each other excellencies where they only 
saw defects. They are brought together in admiring 
comradeship, which resents the shackles restrictive of 
its play. Let me read to you a passage from a letter I 
received a fortnight since from an eminent Anglican 
chaplain now serving with our troops in France : 

I see (he says) in this great war all the excrescences — the non- 
essentials which up till now have masqueraded and misled so 



James Cooper 83 

many religious and non-religious men — drop off in the light of 
great realities ; and I have seen in the eyes of all true lovers of our 
Lord, chaplains and laity, a wistful longing to unite, and mobilize 
our spiritual forces now dissipated and ineffective through dis- 
union. What we look for more and more is a man, so filled with 
the Spirit of God — so free from ambition, covetousness, de- 
nominationalism, with a big heart and deep love, to make a 
plunge and start. We may be able to start out here, if we have 
the good- will of our leaders at home. 

I think I may safely assure my correspondent that 
he has the good-will of all the living leaders of all our 
denominations? May I write and tell him so from this 
present meeting? [Yes...] I think I shall remind him 
further of those words of the Angel of the Lord to 
Gideon when he threshed his wheat in the wine-press 
with a vigour suggestive of his wish to have the Midianites 
beneath his flail — "Go in this thy might, and thou shalt 
save Israel " from their marauding hands. 

At home, then, as well as at the Front, the will is present 
with us; and where there is "the will" there is pretty 
sure to be "the way." 

"The way" (I believe for my part) is substantially 
that laid down by the Pan-Anglican Conference of 1866, 
in the "Lambeth Quadrilateral." Its four points were: 

I. The Holy Scriptures. 

II. The Nicene Creed. 

III. The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's 
Supper ministered with the unfaiUng use of the Words 
of Institution. 

IV. The Historic Episcopate. 

It is fifty-two years since these terms were put forth. 
Have they ever been formally brought before the 
"denominations" for whom presumably they were in- 
tended? Were they even once commended to the nearest 

6—2 



84 Unity between Christian Denominations 

of these Churches by a deputation urging their considera- 
tion? I doubt it. 

Yet the first three of these four conditions are already 
accepted by nearly all the English Nonconformists; and 
certainly by all the Presbyterian Churches, as fully as 
they are in the Church of England. The Presbyterian 
Church of England has set the Nicene Creed on the fore- 
front of its new Confession. Every word of the Nicene 
Creed (as the late Principal Denney pointed out) is in 
the Confession of Faith of all the Scottish Presbyterians. 
The Church of Scotland repeats it at its solemn " Assembly 
Communion" in St Giles'. Its crucial term, the Homo- 
ousion, is in the Articles now sent down to Presbyteries 
with the view of their transmission next May to the 
United Free Church. 

In regard to the Sacramental services our Directory 
is quite express in ordering the use in Baptism and the 
Eucharist of the Words of Institution. I never heard of 
a case in Scotland where they were not used: we should 
condemn their omission should it anywhere occur. 

Undoubtedly the Fourth Article would have, till lately, 
presented difficulties ; but, then, those difficulties were in 
great measure cleared away by the admission of the 
Lambeth Conference of 1908 that in the case of proposals 
for union, say of the Church of Scotland with the Anglican 
Church, reaching the stage of official action, an approach 
might be made along the line of the " Precedents of 1610." 
I had a recent opportunity of stating, in an Address^ I 
gave at King's College, London, what these Precedents 

1 This Address, along with another delivered in St Paul's, has 
been published by Mr Robert Scott, of Paternoster Row, under 
the title Reunion, a Voice from Scotland. 



James Cooper 85 

of 1610 were; how they included the unanimous vote 
of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 
favour of the restoration of diocesan bishops acting in 
conjunction with her graduated series of Church Courts; 
how we thereupon received from the Church of England 
an Episcopate which then, and ever since, she has ac- 
counted vaHd, though neither the Scots bishops she then 
consecrated, nor the clergy of Scotland as a body, were 
required to be re-ordained; and how the combined 
system thus introduced among us gave us by far the 
most briUiant and fruitful period in our ecclesiastical 
annals ; and how Learning, Piety, Art and Church exten- 
sion flourished among us, as they have never done since. 
The system would in all probability have endured to the 
present day but for the arbitrary interferences- — often 
with very good intentions, and for ends in themselves 
desirable — of our Stuart kings. A later restoration of 
Episcopal Church government under Charles II lacked 
the ecclesiastical authority which that of 1610 possessed, 
and was still more hopelessly discredited by its associa- 
tion with the persecution of the Covenanting remnant; 
but even under these disadvantages it was yielding not 
inconsiderable benefits to the religious life of Scotland. 
Under it our Gaelic-speaking highlanders first received 
the entire Bible in their native tongue; the Episcopate 
was adorned by the piety of Leighton and the wisdom of 
Patrick Scougal ; while Henry Scougal in his Life of God 
in the Soul of Man produced a religious classic of enduring 
value. 

The reference by the Lambeth Conference of 1908 was 
meant as the opening of a door, and I understand there was 
some soreness among its supporters that more notice of 



86 Unity between Christian Denominations 

it was not taken in Scotland. But it was never sent to 
Scotland: it was never communicated to the General 
Assembly. Our Scottish newspapers tell us very little of 
what goes on in England; and it must be admitted that 
too often, on both sides of the Tweed, things have appeared 
in the press not calculated to heal differences or make 
for peace. Sarcasm may be very clever: it is sometimes 
useful: it is rarely helpful to good feeling, or to the 
amendment either of him who utters it or of him against 
whom it is directed. The putting forth of the finger and 
speaking vanity are among the things which Isaiah 
declares they must put away who desire to be called the 
restorers of the breach, the repairers of paths to dwell in. 

Now you have taken in England a further step. The 
Second Interim Report of the Archbishops' Sub-Committee 
in "Connexion with the proposed World Conference on 
Faith and Order" is not, I presume, a document of the 
" official" character of a Resolution of a Lambeth Con- 
ference. It is nevertheless a paper of enormous significance 
and hopefulness, not alone as attested by the signatures it 
bears, but also on account of the exposition which it gives 
of the fourth point in the Lambeth Quadrilateral — its own 
condition "that continuity with the Historic Episcopate 
should be effectively preserved." 

This Report is, however, exclusively for England ; while 
my concern to-day is with the kindred question of union 
between the Anghcan Church and the Scottish Presby- 
terian Churches. The day I trust is not far distant when 
we shall see a similar document issued over signatures 
from both sides of the Tweed. Need I say that when 
this comes to be drawn up, we of the North (like Bailie 
Nicol Jarvie with his business correspondents in London) 



James Cooper 87 

"will hold no communications with you but on a footing 
of absolute equality." In none of the branches into which 
it is now divided — Presbyterian or Episcopalian — does 
the Church of Scotland forget that it is an ancient 
national Church which never admitted subjection to its 
greater sister of the South. We may have too good "a 
conceit of ourselves," but we shall at least, like the worthy 
bailie, be true and friendly. And indeed we — or some of 
us — were already moving towards something of the kind. 
The Second Interim Report — it bears the title "Towards 
Christian Unity" — is dated, I observe, March 191 8. In. 
Scotland, so early as the 29th of January, there was held 
at Aberdeen (historically the most natural place for such 
a purpose, for it was the city of the "Aberdeen Doctors " 
and their eirenic efforts) a conference — ^modest, un- 
official, tentative — yet truly representative of the Church 
of Scotland, of the United Free Church, and of the 
Scottish Episcopal Church, which drew up, and has 
issued, a Memorandum'^ suggesting a basis for reunion in 
Scotland, very much on the lines of the Precedents of 
1610, but suggesting such arrangements during a period 
of transition as shall secure that respect is paid to the 
conscientious convictions to be found on both sides. We 
shall not repeat the blunders of 1637 which ruined the 
happy settlement of 1610. 

We have in view a method which shall neither deprive 
Scottish Episcopal congregations of the services fhey 
love, nor attempt to force a Prayer-Book on Presbyterian 
congregations till they wish it for themselves. We shall 
do nothing either to discredit or disparage our existing 
Presbyterian orders; we shall be no less careful not to 
obtrude on the Episcopal minority the services of a 
* Printed in Reunion, a Voice from Scotland, pp. 101-107. 



88 Unity between Christian Denominations 

ministry they deem defective; which shall arrange that 
in the course of a generation the ministry of both com- 
munions shall be acceptable to all, while in the meanwhile 
it will be possible for both to work together. Alike in 
England and in Ireland this Memorandum, where it has 
been seen, has been favourably received. In Scotland it 
— and doubtless other plans — will probably be discussed 
in the coming winter by many a gathering similar to that 
which drew it up; and thus we shall be ready, by the 
time our union with the United Free Church is completed, 
to go on together to this further task. 

By that time you in England will have made some 
progress towards the healing of your divisions. The wider 
settlement of ours would be greatly faciHtated by an 
overt encouragement from you. England is "the pre- 
dominant partner" in our happily united Empire: it is 
the Church of England that should take the initiative 
in a scheme for a United Church for the United Empire. 
She should take that initiative in Scotland. 

Could there be a more appropriate occasion for pro- 
posing conference with a view to it at Edinburgh, than 
the day which sees the happy accompHshment of our 
present Scottish effort? Might not the Church of England, 
the Church of Ireland, and the Scottish Episcopal Church 
(all of which have given tokens of a sympathetic interest 
in our union negotiations) unite to send deputations for 
the purpose to our first reunited General Assembly? Such 
deputations would not go away empty. And they would 
carry with them what would help not only the Cause 
of Christ throughout the ever-widening Empire He has 
given to our hands, but the fulfilment of His blessed 
will that all His people should be one. Auspice Spiritu 
Sancto. Amen. 



UNITY BETWEEN CLASSES 

I 
By the Right Rev. F.T.Woods, D.D. 

INTRODUCTION 

He would be a dull man who did not respond to such a 
theme as the one with which I have been entrusted. 

Before the war, in spite of much enlightenment of the 
social conscience, unity between classes was still far to 
seek. Indeed, the contemplation of the state of English 
society in those early months of 1914 was perhaps more 
calculated to drive the social reformer into pessimism 
than anything which has happened since. The rich were 
hunting for fresh pleasures, the poor were hunting for 
better conditions. The tendencies which were dragging 
these classes apart seemed stronger than those which 
were bringing them together. Then came the war, and it 
has done much to convert a forlorn hope into a bright 
prospect. This has happened not merely, or even mainly, 
owing to the fact that men of all classes are fighting side 
by side in the trenches, but rather owing to the fact 
that the war has cleared our minds, has exposed the real 
dangers of civilisation, and has placarded before the 
world, in terms which cannot be mistaken, the things 
which are most worth living for. 

I propose to ask your attention to my subject under 
three heads. First I shall say something of the basis of 



go Unity between Classes 

class distinction, then I shall put before you some 
attempts which have been made at social unity, and in 
closing I shall try to estimate the hope of the present 
situation. 



THE BASIS OF CLASS DISTINCTION 

Birth and Property have been during most of human 
history the chief points on which class distinction has 
turned. Behind them both, I fear it must be confessed, 
there is that which lies at the root of all civilisation, 
namely force. I presume that the first class distinction 
was between the group of people who could command 
and the group who had to obey. The second group no 
doubt consisted in most cases of conquered enemies who 
were turned into slaves. They were outsiders, the men of 
a lower level. 

But the master group, if I may so call it, would have 
its descendants, who by virtue of family relationships 
would seek to keep their position. This, I conclude, is 
the fountain head of that stream of blue blood which 
has played so large a part in class distinction. It is not 
difficult to make out a strong case for it from the point 
of view of human evolution. The processes of primitive 
warfare may have led to the survival of the fittest or the 
selection of the best. At a time when the sense of social 
responsibility was limited in the extreme, it may have 
been a good thing that the management of men should 
have rested mainly in the hands of those who by natural 
endowments and force of character carae to the top. It is 
unnecessary to dwell at length on the immense influence 
both in our own country and elsewhere which this blood 



F. T. Woods 91 

distinction of class has exercised. It is writ large in the 
history of the word "gentleman," both in the English 
word and its Latin ancestor. The Latin word "generosus," 
always the equivalent of "gentleman" in English-Latin 
documents, signifies a person of good family. It was 
used no doubt in this sense by the Rev. John Ball, the 
strike leader, as we should call him in modern terms, 
of the 14th century, in the lines which formed a kind 
of battlecry of the rebels : 

When Adam delved and Eve span. 
Who was then the gentleman? 

A writer of a century later, William Harrison, says: 
"Gentlemen be those whom their race and blood or at 
least their virtues do make noble and known." 

But the distinction is older than this. According to 
Professor Freeman it goes back well nigh to the Conquest. 
Not indeed the distinction of blood, for that is much 
older, but the formation of a separate class of gentlemen. 
It has been maintained however by some writers that 
this is rather antedating the process, and that the real 
distinction in English life up to the 14th century was 
between the nobiles, the tenants in chivalry, a very 
large class which included all between Earls and Frank- 
lins; and the ignobiles, i.e. the villeins, the ordinary 
citizens and burgesses. The widely prevalent notion that 
a gentleman was a person who had a right to wear coat 
armour is apparently of recent growth, and is possibly 
not unconnected with the not unnatural desire of the 
herald's office to magnify its work. 

It is evident that noble blood in those days was no 
more a guarantee of good character than it is in this, for, 
according to one of the writers on the subject, the 



92 Unity between Classes 

premier gentleman of England in the early days of the 
15th century was one who had served at Agincourt, but 
whose subsequent exploits were not perhaps the best 
advertisement for gentle birth. According to the public 
records he was charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with 
house-breaking, wounding with intent to kill, and pro- 
curing the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to 
pieces while on his knees begging for his life^. 

The first gentleman, commemorated by that name on an 
existing monument, is John Daundelion who died in 1445. 

In the 14th and 15th centuries the chief occupation of 
gentlemen was fighting ; but later on, when law and order 
were more firmly established, the younger sons of good 
families began to enter industrial life as apprentices in 
the towns, and there began to grow up a new aristocracy 
of trade. To William Harrison, the writer to whom I have 
already referred, merchants are still citizens, but he adds : 
"They often change estate with gentlemen as gentlemen 
do with them by mutual conversion of the one into the 
other.'' 

Since those days the name has very properly come to 
be connected less with blue blood than — if I may coin 
the phrase — with blue behaviour. In 1714, Steele lays it 
down in the Tatler that the appellation of gentleman is 
never to be fixed to a man's circumstances but to his 
behaviour in them. And in this connexion we may recall 
the old story of the Monarch, said by some to be James II, 
who replied to a lady petitioning him to make her son 
a gentleman: "I could make him a noble, but God 
Almighty could not make him a gentleman." 

Before we leave the class distinctions based mainly on 

1 Encycl. Brit. xi. 604. 



F. T. Woods 93 

birth and blood, it is well to remark that in England they 
have never counted for so much as elsewhere. It is true 
of course that the nobility and gentry have been a 
separate class, but they have been constantly recruited 
from below. Distinction in war or capability in peace 
was the qualification of scores of men upon whom the 
highest social rank was bestowed in reign after reign in 
our English history. Moreover, birth distinction has never 
been recognised in law, in spite of the fact that the 
manipulation of laws has not always been free from bias. 
The well known words of Macaulay are worth quoting in 
this connexion : 

There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all 
hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had 
none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly 
receiving members from the people, and constantly sending down 
members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become 
a peer, the younger son of a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons 
of peers 5delded precedence to newly made knights. 

The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach of 
any man who could by diligence and thrift realise a good 
estate, or who could attract notice by his valour in battle. 

. . .Goodbloodwas indeed held in high respect: but between good 
blood and the privileges of peerage there was, most fortunately 
for our country, no necessary connection. . . . There was therefore 
here no line like that which in some other countries divides the 
patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not incUned to 
murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise. The 
grandee was not inclined to insult a class into which his own 
children must descend. . . . Thus our democracy was, from an early 
period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most 
democratic in the world; a peculiarity which has lasted down to 
the present day, and which has produced many important moral 
and political effects^. 

^ Macaulay' s History of England (Longman's, 1885), pp. 38, 39, 40. 



94 Unity between Classes 

If blood counted for much in distinctions of class, 
property counted for more. The original distinction 
between the ''haves" and the "have nots" has persisted 
throughout history and is with us to-day. 

In the ancient village, no doubt, the distinction was 
of the simplest. On the one hand was the man who by 
force or by his own energy became possessed of more 
cattle and more sheep than his fellows; on the other 
hand was the man who, in default of such property, was 
ready and willing to give his services to the bigger man, 
whether for wages, or as a condition of living in the village 
and sharing in the rights of the village fields and pastures. 
Here presumably we have the origin of that institution 
of Landlordism which still looms so large in our social 
life. In the early days it was probably more a matter of 
cattle than of land. The possessor of cattle in the village 
would hire out a certain number of them to a poorer 
neighbour, who would have the right to feed them on 
the common land. Thus, even in primitive times, a class 
distinction based on property began to grow up. 

Early in history there was found in most villages a 
chief man who had the largest share of the land. Below 
him there would be three or four landowners of moderate 
importance and property. At the end of the scale were 
the ordinary labourers and villagers, among whom the 
rest of the village lands were divided as a rule on fairly 
equal terms. 

Closely allied to this of course was the organisation of 
the village from the point of view of military service. 
Parallel to this more peaceful organisation of society 
was the elaborate Feudal System, by which, from the 
King downwards, lands were held in virtue of an obhga- 



F. T. Woods 95 

tion on the part of each class to the one above it to pro- 
duce men for the wars in due proportion of numbers and 
equipment. 

From this point of view property in land meant also 
property in men, labourers in peace and soldiers in war. 

As time went on the class distinctions of birth and 
property began more and more to coincide. It was 
Dr Johnson who made the remark that "the English 
merchant is a new species of gentleman." 

The form of property which was always held to be in 
closest connexion with gentle blood was land. This has 
been so in a pre-eminent degree since our English Revo- 
lution at the end of the 17th century. From that time 
onwards the smaller landowners, yeomen and squires 
with small holdings, begin to disappear and the landed 
gentry become practically supreme. Political power in a 
large measure rested with them, and the result was that 
numbers of men who had made money in trade were 
eager to use it in the purchase of land, for this meant 
the purchase of social and political influence. 

It was no doubt this craze for the possession of land 
which led to the process of enclosing the common lands 
of the village, a process on which no true Englishman 
can look back in these days without shame and sorrow. 
It is no doubt arguable that from an economic point of 
view the productive power of the land was increased, 
that agriculture was more efficiently and scientifically 
managed by the comparatively few big men than it 
would have been by the many small men who were 
displaced. None the less the price was too high, for it 
meant a still further accentuation of class distinction. 
It meant the further enrichment of the big man, and the 



96 Unity between Classes 

further impoverishment of the small man. And between 
the two there grew up a class of farmers, separate from 
the labourers, whose outlook on the whole did not make 
for those relations of neighbourliness and even kinship 
which had been among the fine characteristics of the 
ancient village. 

Nor is this the end of the story, for the distinction be- 
tween the ''haves" and the "have nots" was still further 
accentuated, and the two classes driven still further 
apart, by the far-reaching Industrial Revolution of the 
late i8th and early 19th century. 

The alienation between the farmer and the labourer 
was exactly paralleled by the alienation which gradually 
crept in between the manufacturer and the workers. The 
growth of the factory system was indeed so rapid that 
only the keenest foresight could have provided against 
these evils. The same may be said of the amazing develop- 
ment of the towns, particularly in Lancashire and the 
West Riding of Yorkshire, which quickly gathered round 
the new hives of industry. Unfortunately that foresight 
was lacking. On the one hand the science of town-planning 
had hardly been born, on the other hand a hghtning 
accumulation of large fortunes turned the heads of the 
commercial magnates, dehumanised industry, and broke 
up the fellowship which in older and simpler days had 
obtained between the employer and his men. 

It is a charge which we frequently bring against the 
enemy in these da3^s, a charge only too well founded, 
that they are expert in everything except understanding 
human nature. The same maj^ be said of those who were 
concerned in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th 
century. The growing wealth of the country which ' 



F. T. Woods 97 

should have united masters and men in a truer comrade- 
ship, and a richer Hfe, achieved results which were pre- 
cisely the opposite. It developed a greed of cash which 
we have not yet shaken off, and money was accumulated 
in the pockets of men who had had neither aptitude nor 
training in the art of spending it. The workers were 
reduced to a state not far removed from a salaried 
slavery, and the difference between the "haves" and the 
"have nots" was perhaps more acute than at any other 
time in our history. The causes of this were many and 
complex. Not the least of them was the fact that the 
masters of industry were captured by a false theory of 
economics according to which the fund which was avail- 
able for the remuneration of labour could not at any 
given time be greater or less than it was. Human agency 
could not increase its volume, it could only vary its 
distribution. And further, as every man has the right to 
sell his labour for what he can obtain for it, any inter- 
ference between the recipients was held to be unjust. 

*' That theory," as Mr Hammond has told us, "became 
supreme in economics, and the whole movement for 
trade-union organisation had to fight its way against 
this solid superstition'^." 

The doctrine of free labour achieved a wonderful 
popularity; but then, as the writer I have just quoted 
reminds us: "Free labour had not Adam Smith's mean- 
ing : it meant the freedom of the emploj^er to take what 
labour he wanted, at the price he chose and under the 
conditions he thought proper^." 

More and more therefore the employers and the 
workers drifted apart, and the supreme misfortune was 
^ The Town Labourer, p. 205. ^ Ibid., p. 212. 

C.E.L. 7 



98 Unity between Classes 

that the one power which might have drawn them to- 
gether was itself in a state of semi-paralysis in regard to 
the corporate responsibility of the community. That 
power was religion. There were times, as I shall endeavour 
to point out later, when Christianity was able to produce 
an atmosphere of comradeship stronger than the differ- 
ences of class. But to the very great loss of both country 
and Church this was not one of them. 

At the moment when the corporate message of the 
Church was needed, it was looking the other way, and 
concentrating its thought on the individual. The Refor- 
mation was in large measure a revolt from the imperial 
to the personal conception of religion. I do not deny that 
this revolt was necessary and beneficial. But the reaction 
from the corporate aspect of Christianity went too far. 
When this reaction was further reinforced by the Puritan 
movement, which with all its strength audits fine austerity 
fastened its attention on the minutiae of personal con- 
duct, and left the community as such almost out of 
sight, it is not surprising to find that religion at the end 
of the i8th, and through a large part of the 19th century, 
failed to produce just that sense of brotherhood which 
would have mitigated the whole situation and prevented 
much of the practical paganism which I have described. 

Even the great revival connected with the name of 
John Wesley brought all its fire to bear on the conversion 
of the man, when the social unit which was most in 
need of that conversion was the community. The result 
of all this was that, partly owing to ignorance, partly 
owing to prejudice, partly owing to the misreading of the 
New Testament, the messengers of religion had no 
message of corporate responsibility for nation or class. 



F. T. Woods 99 

There was no one to lift aloft the torch of human brother- 
hood over the dark and gloomy landscape of English 
life. So far from that, the people who figured large in 
religion were convinced quite honestly that the division 
of classes was a heaven sent order, with which it would 
be impious to interfere, and further that the main 
message of religion to the people at large was an authori- 
tative injunction to good behaviour, and patient resig- 
nation to the circumstances in which Providence had 
placed them. The notion that the organisation of Society, 
particularly on its industrial side, was wholly inconsistent 
with the ideals of the New Testament never so much as 
entered their heads, and any suggestion to this effect 
would have been regarded not merely as revolutionary 
but sacrilegious. 

I have ventured on this very rough description of 
class distinctions, before our modern days, because it is 
through the study of our forefathers' mistakes and a 
truer understanding of our forefathers' inspirations that 
we may hope to create a better world in the days that 
are coming. 

II 
ATTEMPTS AT SOCIAL UNITY 

Let me ask your attention now to a few of the attempts 
which have been made to create a deeper social unity. 

Some of these were naturally and inevitably developed 
in primitive days by the simple fact that "birds of a 
feather flock together." 

Men engaged in pastoral pursuits gathered themselves 
into the tribe with its strong blood bond. The tillage of 
the fields led to the existence of the clan, with its family 

7—2 



100 Unity between Classes 

system and its elaborate organisation of the land. In the 
same way industrial activity produced the Guild, that is 
the grouping of men by crafts, a grouping which might 
well be revived and encouraged on a larger scale in the 
rearrangements of the future. 

I need not remind you how large a place was occupied 
by the Guilds in English life. They were not Trade Unions 
in the modern sense, for they included both masters and 
men in one organisation. Nor must we attribute a modern 
meaning to those two phrases, masters and men, when 
we speak of the ancient Guild. For in a large measure 
every man was his own employer. He was a member of 
the league ; he kept the rules ; but he was his own master. 
The master did not mean the manager of the workmen, 
but the expert in the work. He was the master of the art 
in question, and though his fellows might be journeymen 
or apprentices, they all belonged to the same social class, 
and throughout the Guild there was a spirit of comrade- 
ship which was consecrated by the sanctions of religion. 

For it was the Guilds which were the prime movers in 
organising those Miracle Plays which were the delight of 
the Middle Ages, and which formed the main outlet for 
that dramatic instinct which used to be so strong in 
England, and which paved the way for Shakespeare and 
the modern stage. 

The Guild was not concerned mainly with money but 
with work, and still more with the skill and happiness of 
the worker, and its aim was to resist inequality. It was, 
in the pointed words of Mr Chesterton, 

to ensure, not only that bricklaying should survive and succeed, 
but that every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought 
to rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded 



F. T. Woods ioi 

whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds 
to cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers 
with their clothes ; to strengthen the weakest link, or go after the 
hundredth sheep ; in short to keep the row of little shops unbroken 
like a line of battle^. 

The Guild in fact aimed at keeping each man free and 
happy in the possession of his little property, whereas 
the Trade Union aims at assembling into one company a 
large number of men who have little or no property at 
all, and who seek to redress the balance by collective 
action. The mediaeval Guild therefore will certainly go 
down to history as one of the most gallant attempts, and 
for the time being one of the most successful, to create a 
true comradeship among all who work, and to keep at a 
distance those mere class distinctions which, though 
their foundations are often so flimsy, tend to grip men 
as in an iron vice. 

But I must not pass by another social organisation 
which looms very large in the old days, and which 
approached social unity from a side wholly different 
from those I have mentioned, namely from the military 
side: I mean the Feudal System. Here there has been 
much misunderstanding. Its very name seems to breathe 
class distinction. We have come casually and rather 
carelessly to identify it with the tyranny and oppression 
which exalted the few at the expense of the many. This 
point of view is however a good deal less than just. 
It is quite true that as worked by William the Norman 
and several of his successors the system became only 
too often an instrument of gross injustice and crass 
despotism ; but at its best, and in its origin, it was based 
on the twin foundations of protection on the one hand 
^ G, K. Chesterton, Short History of England, p. 98. 



102 Unity between Classes 

and duty on the other. I will venture to quote a high 
authority in this connexion, namely Bishop Stubbs. 

The Feudal System, with all its tyranny and all its faults and 
shortcomings, was based on the requirements of mutual help and 
service, and was maintained by the obligations of honour and 
fealty. Regular subordination, mutual obligation, social unity, 
were the pillars of the fabric. The whole state was one : the king 
represented the unity of the nation. The great barons held their 
estates from him, the minor nobles of the great barons, the gentry 
of these vassals, the poorer freemen of the gentry, the serfs 
themselves were not without rights and protectors as well as 
duties and service. Each gradation, and every man in each, owed 
service, fixed definite service, to the next above him, and expected 
and received protection and security in return. Each was bound 
by fealty to his immediate superior, and the oath of the one im- 
plies the pledged honour and troth of the other^. 

This system indeed was very far from perfect, but it 
certainly was an attempt to bind the nation together in 
one social unit, to provide a measure of protection for 
all, and to demand duties from all. It sought to lay 
equal stress on rights and duties. In this respect — and I 
am still thinking of the system at its best — it was far 
ahead of modern 19th century Industrialism, a system 
which might be described with but little exaggeration as 
laying sole emphasis on rights for one class and duties for 
the other. 

But the supreme attempt which so far has been made 
to promote unity between classes has approached the 
problem from a far loftier standpoint ; not industrial, nor 
military, but religious. And this attempt has been on a 
larger scale and on firmer foundations than any of the 
others, for it has sought to unite men in spite of their 
differences. It has tried, that is, to get below the varieties 

^ Stubbs' Lectures on Early English History, pp. 18, 19. 



F, T Woods 103 

of race or family or occupation, and create a unity which, 
because it transcends them all, may hope to last. As a fact 
this attempt has so far surpassed all others, and has met 
with the greatest measure of success. And lest I should 
be suspected of prejudice I will quote an outside witness : 

A very pregnant saying of T. H. Green was that during the 
whole development of man the command, "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself" has never varied, what has varied is the 

answer to the question — Who is my neighbour? The influence 

upon the development of civilisation of the wider conception of 
duty and responsibility to one's fellow-men which was introduced 
into the world with the spread of Christianity can hardly be over- 
estimated. The extended conception of the answer to the question 
Who is my neighbour ? which has resulted from the characteristic 
doctrines of the Christian religion — a conception transcending all 
the claims of family, group, state, nation, people or race and even 
all the, interests comprised in any existing order of society — has 
been the most powerful evolutionary force which has ever acted 
on society. It has tended gradually to break up the absolutisms 
inherited from an older civilization and to bring into being an 
entirely new type of social efficiency^. 

Or to take another witness equally unprejudiced, 
who puts the same truth more tersely still, the late 
Professor Lecky. "The brief record of those three short 
years," referring to Christ's life, "has done more to soften 
and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of 
philosophers and exhortations of morahsts." For a third 
witness we will call Mazzini. "We owe to the Church," 
he declared, "the idea of the unity of the human family 
and of the equahty and emancipation of souls." That 
this is amply borne out by the history of the Church 
in early days is not difficult to prove. The unex- 
ceptionable evidence of a Pagan writer is here very 
much to the point. Says Lucian of the Christians: 

^ Benjamin Kidd, Encycl. Brit. vol. xxv. p. 329. 



104 Unity between Classes 

"Their original lawgiver had taught them that they 
were all brethren, one of another . . . They become in- 
credibly alert when anything . . . affects their common 
interests^." 

In the same way the ancient Christian writer TertuUian 
observes with characteristic irony: "It is our care for the 
helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that brands us 
in the eyes of many of our opponents. Only look, they say, 
' look how they love one another ^ \'" It is not surprising 
that this was so when you look into the writings which 
form the New Testament. Apart from the words and 
example of the Founder of Christianity, few men have 
ever lived who were more alive to existing social dis- 
tinctions, and also to the splendour of that scheme which 
transcends them all, than St Paul. In proof of this it is 
sufficient to point to that immortal treatise on social 
unity which is commonly caUed the Epistle to the 
Ephesians. In this the fundamental secret is seen to 
consist, not in a rigid system but in a transforming spirit 
working through a divine Society in which all worldly 
distinctions are of no account. Slavery, for instance, was, 
in his view, and was actually in process of time, to be 
abolished not by a stroke of the pen but by a change of 
ideal. Nor is the witness lacking in writings subsequent 
to the New Testament. To instance one of the earliest. 
In an official letter sent by the Roman Church to the 
Christians in Corinth towards the end of the first century, 
in a passage eulogising the latter community this sug- 
gestive sentence occurs: "You did everything without 
respect of persons." 

^ Lucian quoted by Hamack, Mission and e^fpansion of 
Christianity, vol. i. p. 149. ^ Ibid. 



F. T. Woods 105 

Needless to say however, this point of view, this new 
spirit, only gradually permeated the Christian Church 
itself, let alone the great World outside. We are not 
surprised to learn that it was a point of criticism among 
the opponents of the religion that among its adherents 
were still found masters and slaves. An ancient writer 
in reply to critics who cry out "You too have masters 
and slaves. Where then is your so-called equality? " 
thus makes answer : 

Our sole reason for giving one another the name of brother is 
because we beheve we are equals. For since all human objects are 
measured by us after the spirit and not after the body, although 
there is a diversity of condition among human bodies, yet slaves 
are not slaves to us; we deem and term them brothers after the 
spirit, and fellow-servants in reUgion^. 

Pointing in the same direction is the fact that the title 
"slave" never occurs on a Christian tombstone. 

It is plain from this, and from similar quotations which 
might be multiplied, that the policy of Christianity in 
face of the first social problem of the day, namely 
slavery, was not violently to undo the existing bonds by 
which Society was held together, in the hope that some 
new machinery would at once be forthcoming — a plan 
which has since been adopted with dire consequences in 
Russia — but to evacuate the old system of the spirit 
which sustained it; and to replace it with a new spirit, 
a new outlook on life, which would slowly but inevitably 
lead to an entire reconstruction of the social framework. 

Already too, within the Church this sense of brother- 
hood was making itself felt on the industrial side as well 
as where more directly spiritual duties were concerned. 

1 Lactantius quoted by Harnack, Ibid. p. i68. 



io6 Unity between Classes 

It seems to have been recognised in the Christian Society 
that every brother could claim the right of being main- 
tained if he were unable to work. Equally it was empha- 
sised that the duty of work was paramount on all who 
were capable of it. "For those able to work, provide 
work; to those incapable of work be charitable." This 
aspect of the matter finds a singular emphasis in a second 
century document known as " The Teaching of the Twelve 
Apostles," in which this sense of industrial brotherhood 
finds very significant expression. Speaking of visitors 
from other Churches it is directed that "if any brother 
has a trade let him follow that trade and earn the bread 
he eats. If he has no trade, exercise your discretion in 
arranging for him to live among you as a Christian, but 
not in idleness. If he will not do this, that is to say, to 
undertake the work which you provide for him, he is 
trafficking with Christ. Beware of men like that." 

On this side of its life therefore, the Church came very 
near to being a vast Guild where with the highest sanction 
rights and duties were intermingled in due proportion, 
and that true social unity estabHshed, which while it 
refuses privileges bestows protection. On these founda- 
tions the organisation was reaired, which like some great 
Cathedral dominated that stretch of centuries usually 
known as the Middle Ages. We could all of us hold forth 
on its drawbacks and evils, yet its benefits were tre- 
mendous. For one thing it created an aristocracy wholly 
independent of any distinction of blood or property. 
Anyone might become an Archbishop if only he had the 
necessary gifts. Still more anyone might become a Saint. 
The charmed circle of the Church's nobihty was constantly 
recruited from every class, and was therefore a standing 



F. T. Woods 107 

and effectual protest against the flimsier measurements 

of Society and the more ephemeral gradations of rank. 

Obviously this process found as great a scope in England 

as elsewhere. It was the Church which was the most 

potent instrument in bringing together Norman and 

Saxon as well as master and slave. For, as Macaulay has 

said with perfect truth, it 

creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts 
the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and com- 
pels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal 
of the hereditary bondman. ... So successfully had the Church 
used her formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, 
she had enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom 
except her own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very 
tenderly treated^. 

This makes it particularly deplorable that in con- 
sequence of the great reaction in religion from the cor- 
porate to the personal, to which I have alluded, the 
Church's power, as far as Britain was concerned, though 
so splendidly exercised in the preceding centuries, should 
have been almost non-existent just at the moment when 
it was most required, in the Agricultural and Industrial 
Revolution of comparatively modern times, 

III 
THE HOPE OF THE PRESENT SITUATION 

I fear that a large portion of this lecture has been 
taken up with the past. But even so rough and brief a 
review as I have attempted is a necessary prelude to a 
just estimate, both of our present position and of our 
future prospects. It is often supposed, indeed, that the 
study of history predisposes a man's mind to a conserva- 

^ History of England (Longman's, 1885), vol. i. p. 25. 



io8 Unity between Classes 

tive view. He studies the slow development of institu- 
tions, or the gradual influence of movements, and the 
trend of his thought works round to the very antipodes 
of anything that is revolutionary or catastrophic. But 
there is another side to the matter. The study of history 
may so expose the injustices of the past and their in- 
trenchments that the student reaches the conclusion 
that nothing but an earthquake — an earthquake in men's 
ideas at the very least — can avail to set things right; 
that the best thing that could happen would be an 
explosion so terrible as to make it possible to break 
completely with the past, and start anew on firmer 
principles and better ways. After all, as a great Cambridge 
scholar once said, " History is the best cordial for drooping 
spirits," For if on the one hand it exposes the selfishnesses 
of men, on the other it displays an exhibition of those 
Divine-human forces of justice and sacrifice and good will 
which in the long run cannot be denied, and which en- 
courage the brightest hopes for the age which is upon us. 
The fact is, we are in the midst of precisely such an 
explosion as I have indicated. The immeasurable privilege 
has been given to us of being alive at a time when, most 
literally, an epoch is being made. Contemporary observers 
of events are not always the best judges of their signifi- 
cance, yet we shall hardly be mistaken if we assert that 
without doubt we stand at one of the turning points of 
the world's long story, that the phrase used of another 
epoch-making moment is true of this one, "Old things 
are passing awaj^ all things are becoming new." For 
history is presenting us in these days with a clean slate, 
and to the men of this generation is given the opportunity 
for making a fresh start such as in the centuries gone 



F. T. Woods 109 

by has often been sought, but seldom found. We are 
called to the serious and strenuous task of freeing our 
minds from old preconceptions — and the hold they have 
over us, even at a moment like this when the world is 
being shaken, is amazing — the task of reaching a new 
point of view from which to see our social problems, 
and of not being disobedient to the heavenly vision 
wheresoever it may lead us. 

That vision is Fellowship, and it is not new. Though 
the war is, in the sense which I have suggested, a 
terrific explosion which in the midst of ruin and chaos 
brings with it supreme opportunities, it is equally true 
to say that it forms no more than a ghastly parenthesis 
in the process of fellowship both between nations and 
classes which had already begun to make great strides. 

"The sense of social responsibihty has been so deepened 
in our civilisation that it is almost impossible that one 
nation should attempt to conquer and subdue another 
after the manner of the ancient world." 

These words sound rather ironical. They come from 
the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They 
were written about seven years ago in perfect good faith, 
as a sober estimate of the forces of fellowship which 
could be then discerned. Save for the ideals and ambitions 
of the central Empires of Europe they were perfectly 
true. What the war has done in regard to this fellowship 
is to expose in their hideous nakedness the dangers which 
threaten it, and to which in pre-war days we were far 
too blind, but also to unveil that strong passion for 
neighboiuliness which lies deep in the hearts of men, 
and an almost fierce determination to give it truer 
expression in the age which is ahead. 



no Unity between Classes 

You will naturally ask what effect the war is likely to 
have on this problem of class distinction. How far will it 
hinder or enhance the social unity for which we seek? 

We must of course beware of being unduly optimistic. 
The fact that millions of our men are seeing with their 
own eyes the results which can be achieved by naked 
force will not be without its effect on their attitude when 
they return to their homes. If force is so necessarj^ and so 
successful on the field of battle why not equally so in the 
industrial field? If nations find it necessary to face each 
other with daggers drawn,, it may be that classes will 
have to do the same. 

Personally I doubt whether this argument is likely to 
carry much weight. It is much more likely in my view 
that our men will be filled with so deep a hatred of every- 
thing that even remotely savours of battle, that a great 
tide of reaction against mere force will set in, and a great 
impetus be given to those higher and more spiritual 
motor-powers which during the war we have put out of 
court. 

On the other hand it is easy to cherish a rather shallow 
hope as to the continuation in the future of that unity of 
classes which obtains in the trenches. Surely, it is argued, 
men who have stood together at the danger point and 
gone over the top together at the moment of assault will 
never be other than brothers in the more peaceful pursuits 
which will foUow. Yet it is not easy to foretell what will 
happen when the tremendous restraint of military service 
is withdrawn, when Britain no longer has her back to 
the wall, and when the overwhelming loyalty which 
leaps forth at the hour of crisis falls back into its normal 
quiescence, like the New Zealand geyser when its momen- 



F.T.Woods hi 

tary eruption is over. Any hopefulness which we may 
cherish for the future must rest on firmer foundations 
than these. 

Such a foundation, I beheve, has come to hght, and I 
must say a few words about it as I close. 

Broadly speaking it is this. The war has taught us that 
it is possible to live a national family life, in which 
private interests are subordinated in the main to the 
service of the State; and further that this new social 
organisation of the nation has called forth an unprece- 
dented capacity in tens of thousands both of men and 
women, not merely for self-denying service, but for the 
utmost heights of heroism even unto death. 

Men have vaguely cherished this ideal of national life 
before the war, but now it has been translated into 
concrete fact, and the nation can never forget the deep 
sense of corporate efficiency, even of corporate joy, which 
has ensued from this obliteration of the old class distinc- 
tions, this amalgamation of all and sundry in a common 
service. The fact is that a new class distinction has in a 
measure taken the place of the old, a distinction which 
has nothing to do with blood or with money, but solely 
with service. The nation is graded, not in degrees of 
social importance but in degrees of capacity for service. 
The only superiority is one of sacrifice. And each grade 
takes its hat off to the other on the equal standing 
ground of an all pervading patriotism. The only social 
competition is not in getting but in giving. National 
advantage takes the place of personal profit, and there is 
a sense of neighbourliness such as Britain has not experi- 
enced for many a long day, possibly for many a long 
century. 



112 Unity between Classes 

The supreme problem before us, I take it, is how to 
conserve this relationship and carry it over from the 
day of war to the day of peace. To do it will call for just 
that same spirit of sacrifice and service which is its own 
most predominant characteristic. 

For one thing we must be quite definitely prepared in 
every section of society for a new way of life. From the 
economic point of view this will mean that the rich will 
be less rich, and the poor will be enabled to lead a larger 
life. Already the wealthy classes have been learning to 
live a simple life, and to substitute the service of the 
country for their own personal enjoyment. A serious call 
will come to them to continue in that state of life when 
the war is over. In some degree at least the pressure of the 
financial burden which the nation will have to bear will 
compel them to do so. 

To the workers too in the same way the call will come 
to a new and more worthy way of life. I am thinking now 
of the workers at home who have been earning unprece- 
dented wages, and thereby in many cases are already 
assaying a larger life. They will be reluctant to give 
this up, but only a gradual redistribution of wealth can 
make it permanent. It is not of course merely or mainly 
a matter of wages. The only real enlargement of life is 
spiritual. It is an affair of the mind and the soul. 

The more we bring a true education within reach of 
the workers the more wiU there arise that sense of real 
kinship which only equality of education can adequately 
guarantee. 

And speaking at Cambridge one cannot refrain from 
remarking that the University itself will have to submit 
to a considerable re-adjustment of its life if it is to be a 



F.T.Woods 113 

pioneer in this intellectual comradeship of which I speak. 
A University may be a nursery of class distinction. In 
some measure it certainly has been so in the past. The 
opportunity is now before it to lead the way in estab- 
lishing the only kind of equality which is really worth 
having. 

Then too there are obvious steps which can be taken 
without delay in a new organisation of industry. 

I am not one of those who think that the industrial 
problem can be solved in five minutes or even in five 
years. None the less it should not be impossible in wise 
ways to give the workers a true share of responsibility, 
particularly in matters which concern the conditions of 
their work and the remuneration of their labour. 

If the sense of being driven by a taskmaster, whether 
it be the foreman of the shop, or the manager of the 
works, could give place to a truer co-operation in the 
management, and a larger measure of responsibility for 
the worker, we should be well on the road to eliminating 
one of the most persistent causes of just that kind of 
class distinction which we want to abolish. The more 
men work together in a real comradeship, the more mere 
social distinctions fade into the background. Is this not 
written on every page of the chronicles of this war? 

But the supreme factor in the situation, without which 
no mere adjustment of organisation will prevail, is that 
new outlook on life which can only be described as a 
subordination of private advantage to the service of the 
country. 

It is this alone which can really abolish the almost 
eternal class distinctions which we have traced throughout 
our survey, the distinction between the ''haves " and the 

C.E.L. 8 



114 Unity BETWEEN Classes 

"have nots." For, as this spirit grows, the "have nots" 
tend to disappear, and the "haves" look upon what they 
have not as a selfish possession for their own enjoyment, 
but as a means of service for the common weal. Property, 
that which is most proper to a man, is seen to be pre- 
cisety that contribution which he is capable of making 
to the welfare of his fellows. 

The crux, the very core of the whole problem, is to 
find some means by which this new outlook can be 
produced, and a new motive by which men can be con- 
strained to turn the vision into fact. 

Here will come in that power which, as I pointed out, 
has sometimes been so potent and sometimes so impotent, 
but which, if it is allowed its proper scope, can never fail. 
I mean of course religion. 

If men can be brought to see that this new outlook with 
its corresponding re-adjustment of social life is not merely 
a project of reformers but the plan of the Most High 
God, the deliberate intention of the supreme Spirit- 
force of the universe, the Scheme that was taught by 
the Prince of men, then indeed we may hope that the 
class distinction of which He spoke will at last be adopted : 
"Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your 
minister: and whosoever of you will be the chief est, 
shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give 
his life a ransom for many^." 

* St Mark x. 43-45. 



UNITY BETWEEN CLASSES 

II 

By the Right Hon. J. R. Clynes, M.P. 

I HAVE not the advantage of knowing anything of the 
treatment of any part of this subject by any preceding 
speaker. I myself intend to deal with it from the industrial 
and social standpoint, for I think if we are to seek unity 
amongst classes it is most important in the national 
interest that unity should first be sought and secured in 
the industries of the country. That there is disunity is 
suggested and admitted in the terms of the subject. This 
disunity has grown out of conditions which range over a 
few generations. I believe that these conditions grew 
largely out of our ignoring the human side of industry 
and the general life conditions of the masses of our workers. 
Our economic doctrine ignored the human factor, and 
measured what was termed national progress in terms 
merely of material wealth without due regard to who 
owned the wealth, made mainly by the energy of the 
industrial population. Religious doctrines and religious 
institutions were not the cause of that unhappy situation, 
but they had suffered from it, until now we find a very 
considerable number of the population engaged in a 
struggle for fife, in a struggle for the material means of 
existence, handicapped by belief that their own unaided 
effort alone can assist them, that they must not look for 

8—2 



n6 Unity BETWEEN Classes 

help to any other class, or to any other quarter. Moral 
precepts have not the influence which they ought to have 
upon our industrial relations. Workers are thrown back 
upon their own resources; and in the use of those re- 
sources, during the past fifteen years particularly, much 
has been revealed to us of what is now in the working class 
mind. I am not suggesting that to seek a settlement of 
conditions of disunity, or the trouble arising from those 
conditions, you must coddle the working classes, praise 
them and pay them highly, and try to keep them con- 
tented with conditions which in themselves cannot be 
defended. I do not mean that at all. What I mean is that 
if unity between classes in industrial and economic life is 
to be sought and secured, it can be got only at a price, 
paid in a two-fold form ; that of giving a larger yield of the 
wealth of the nation to those who mainly by their energies 
make that wealth, and of placing the producing classes 
upon a level where they will receive a higher measure of 
respect, of thanks, and regard than they previously have 
received from the nation as a whole. I was asked among 
others some twelve months ago to share in the investiga- 
tions then made by representatives of the Government to 
discover the immediate cause of the very serious unrest 
then displayed in the country, and we went for a period of 
many weeks into the main centres of the kingdom and 
brought a varied collection of witnesses before us in order 
that the most reliable evidence should be obtained, and 
one who favoured us with his views was the Rev. Canon 
Green, whom I am going to quote because of his great 
experience among the working class populations in various 
circumstances and over many years in Manchester and 
elsewhere. This is what Canon Green writes : 



J. R. Clynes 117 

They (the working classes) do not see why their hours should 
be so long, and their wages so small, their lives so dull and colour- 
less, and their opportunities of reasonable rest and recreation so 
few. Can we wonder that with growing education and intelUgence 
the workers of England are beginning to contrast their lot with 
that of the rich and to ask whether so great inequalities are 
necessary? 

There I believe you have put in the plainest and gentlest 
terms the working of the working class mind as it is to- 
day. The country has given them more opportunities of 
education. When they were less educated, or, if I may 
say so, more ignorant than they are now, they were 
naturally more submissive and content with conditions 
the cause of which they so little understood. You cannot 
send the children of the poor to school, and improve your 
State agencies for education, and increase the millions 
annually which the country is ready to spend in teaching 
the masses of the people more than they knew before, 
and expect those masses to remain content with the 
economic and social conditions which even disturbed their 
more ignorant fathers. In short, the more you educate 
and train the working classes, the more naturally you 
bring them to the point of revolt against conditions 
which are inhuman or unfair, or which cannot be brought 
to square with the higher standard of education which 
they may receive. I am sure when the community come 
to understand that it is a natural and even a proper 
sense of revolt on the part of the masses of the people 
they will not regret their education. Out of all this feeHng 
of discontent in the minds of the industrial population 
there has in the last thirty odd years grown very strong 
organisation. The Trade Union movement, which I 
mention first as a very great factor in all these matters. 



ii8 Unity between Classes 

is a most powerful and important factor, and the country 
will have to pay greater regard to the steps which Trade 
Unionism may take than the country has been disposed 
previously to do. The Trade Union movement was 
stimulated and developed by the conditions which it 
was brought into being to remedy. The Trade Union was 
not the growth of mere agitation. The average Briton 
must be convinced that there is something really wrong 
before he will try to remedy it at all, and you cannot by 
lectures, and by teUing the people that they have been 
and are being oppressed, stir the people of this country 
to any resistance. Particularly you cannot get them to 
pay a contribution for it. It was because of the experience 
of the mass of the workers, their low wages and long hours 
and the bad conditions of employment, that they organ- 
ised and used the might that comes from numbers, and 
paid contributions which in the sum total now amount 
to many millions of pounds in the way of reserve funds. 
No apology was needed for the working classes and no 
defence is required for this step taken by the workers to 
unite themselves in Trade Unions, and thereby secure 
by the unity of numbers the power which, acting singly, 
it was impossible for them to exercise. This Trade Union 
movement is quite alive to the division which exists 
among our classes, and I am going to suggest that the 
movement might be used, might be properly employed, 
in obtaining that unity of classes which we are here to 
consider. 

Well, then, we may, whilst not overlooking other 
helpful activities of a large number of people in this 
country, seek this unity among three main divisions of 
our people, viz. (a) in industries, (b) in agriculture, and 



J. R. Clynes 119 

(c) in businesses. Given unity of interest and oneness of 
purpose and aim in those three broad divisions of the 
nation, the rest must be attracted and brought into 
harmony by mere force of example, if nothing else, with 
the unity which might be secured in the three broad 
divisions to which I have referred. One of the hopeful 
things, the significant things, recently uttered in other 
quarters from which I am going to quote, is clearly seeking 
this tendency to unity instead of the different interests 
and classes being driven by the waste and folly of the 
disuniting lines upon which so far we have persisted. 
I observe that only a few days ago Lord Selborne, who 
is one of our principal mouthpieces on agricultural 
matters, presided at a new body called into existence 
within the past few weeks and to be known as the 
National Agricultural Council. Now, that is not a body 
which will consist of landowners, or of farmers, or of 
farm workers; it is a body to consist of all three. The 
landowners, the farmers, and the agricultural workers 
have come to recognise that they all have something in 
common touching agriculture, touching the trade or 
industry in which they are brought into close touch day 
by day. I know as a matter of fact that only a very few 
years ago the Farmers' Union would not tolerate the 
idea of the farm workers having a union, and the land 
workers looked with real dread upon the farmers having 
a union, and now all three have come to the stage when 
they agree to join in one Council, and, though it was 
admitted that the interests of those three classes were 
primarily in conflict, it was recognised that by holding 
meetings, by the representatives of all these quite distinct 
interests frequently coming together, much good might be 



120 Unity between Classes 

done. For what? As they say, for agriculture. So, though 
none of them will forfeit any rightful interest anyone of 
them may have in the pursuit of a special claim, they 
will all recognise a higher sense of duty, and feel there is 
an obligation upon them to make agriculture in this 
country a greater thing not only for themselves as the three 
partners, but for the mass of the community at large. 
And if it is necessary to do that in the farmers' interest 
or the landowners' interest, it was at least as necessary 
to do it in the interest of the agricultural worker, and I 
put his claim first, not because he is the sole contributor 
to any yield that may come from the land, but because 
he is the most numerous body, and numbers in this as 
in other respects may well be the determining factor ; 
and because if he withholds his labour there will be none 
of the fruit of the soil for which we look year after year. 
I follow up this statement by an authoritative one from 
another quarter. Lord Lee, who as we know was the 
Director of the Food Production Department at the 
Board of Agriculture, spoke some time ago on this 
aspect of the case, and said: "Take the agricultural 
labourer for example. Does anyone suppose, or suggest, 
that he should return from the trenches — where he has 
distinguished himself in a way unsurpassed by any other 
class in the community — to the old miserable conditions 
under which, in most parts of the country, he was under- 
paid, wretchedly housed, and denied almost any pleasure 
in life, except such as the public house could offer him? 
Those conditions were a disgrace to the country, and I 
shall never be content until they are swept away for ever. 
I do not say this only in the interest of the man himself; 
it is necessary these conditions should go, in the best 



J. R. ClYNES 121 

interests not merely of the labourer but of the farmer 
and of agriculture." So it may be that unity and oneness 
of purpose and of action will be driven upon us as one 
of the bye-products of war conditions. For your simple 
plain agricultural worker will come back feeling that as 
he has fought for the liberties of his country he will be 
entitled to enjoy a little more of it than ever before, 
that if the land is to be freed from designs of the tyrant 
abroad it must be freed also from any wrong at home, 
and that he must have a larger share in the fruits of his 
labour than he has enjoyed before. My own view is that 
you will not on that account make the farm worker a 
less efficient harvestman, but you will make him a happier 
father, you will be making him a more contented citizen, 
and may make him a more profitable worker than he 
has ever been. 

Various remedies have been tried or thought of to give 
effect to what are our common aspirations. One I have 
seen referred to frequently is one I would like to see 
always avoided. It is the remedy of placing before work- 
men as a necessity a greatly increased output from their 
manual labour in the future; not that I am opposed to 
an increased output, but I am not going to demand it as 
part of the bargain which should itself be arranged and 
carried out, even if it did not necessarily secure for us 
any greater sum total of wealth than we now enjoy; for 
poor as we may have accounted ourselves we have seen 
in the past few years how vastly we can spend and lend 
in support of any high purpose to which the country may 
devote itself. Poverty can never again be claimed by 
the nation as a whole whenever there is a proper and 
reasonable demand for any social change or reform which 



122 Unity between Classes 

may be necessary and proper. Men are asking for a 
greater yield, for a greater output, for building up our 
wealth higher than ever before, so as to repair the ravages 
of the war, if for no other purpose. With all those objects 
I agree, but we must not make them as terms to the 
worker in exchange for those conditions of unity which 
we are asking our workers to arrange with us. Greater 
output, increased efficiency, a bigger and better return 
of wealth from industrial and agricultural energy, can 
well come out of a better working system, a better re- 
arrangement of combined effort, a more extensive use of 
machinery, a more satisfactory sub-division of labour, a 
wider employment of the personal experience and tech- 
nical skill of our industrial classes, a higher state of 
administrative efficiency and management in the work- 
shops, the creation of a better and more humane atmo- 
sphere in the workshops. Out of all of these things a 
greater yield of wealth could be produced, and it is along 
those lines we must go in order not merely to convert 
but to convince the workman that he is not being used 
as a mere tool for some ulterior end for the benefit of 
some smaller class in the country. It has been said by 
some that Trade Union restrictions and limitations must 
go. I candidly admit there have been Trade Union regu- 
lations and conditions which perhaps have stood in the 
way of some increased output, but I am not here to 
apologise for Trade Union rules. Every class has its 
regulations and rules. The more powerful and the more 
wealthy the class the more rigid and stringent those rules 
have been. However, the class which was most in need 
of regulations and rules, the working class, was the first 
to set the example of setting them aside as a general 



J. R. Clynes 123 

war measure when the country called upon the workers 
to take action of that kind during 1915. We must, there- 
fore, keep in mind the fact that workmen are naturally 
suspicious. That suspicion is the growth of the workshop 
system, into which I have not now the time to go, and 
we must avoid causing the workman to suspect that our 
unity, the unity we are seeking among classes, is a mere 
device for getting him to work harder and produce 
greater wealth and perhaps labour even longer hours 
than ever. 

The first great step towards this unity is to secure the 
good will of the Trade Unions. Having secured that, the 
next thing is to proceed upon lines which will bring at 
once home to the individual workman in the workshop 
some sense of responsibility with regard to the response 
which he must make to the appeal which we put before 
him. In short, better relations must precede any first 
step that could effectively be taken to secure this greater 
unity, and better relations are impossible in industry 
until we have given the individual workman a greater 
sense of responsibility of what he is in the workshop for. 
Let me briefly outline how that might be secured. It was 
put, I think, quite eloquently if simply in an address to 
the Trade Union Congress a short time ago by the Presi- 
dent of the Congress, who said that the workman wanted 
a voice in the daily management of the employment in 
which he spends his working life, in the atmosphere and 
in the conditions under which he has to work, in the 
hours of beginning and ending work, in the conditions 
of remuneration, and even in the manners and practices 
of the foremen with whom he had to be in contact. " In 
all these matters," said the President, "workmen have a 



124 Unity between Classes 

right to a voice — even to an equal voice — with the 
management itself." I know that is a big, and to some 
an extravagant claim to make, but to set it aside or 
ignore it is to provoke and invite further trouble. 
Industry can no longer be run for the profit which it 
produces, or even because of the wealth which collective 
energy can make. That, indeed, was the mistake out of 
which, as I said at the beginning, this disunion, and this 
suspicion, and this selfishness, have grown. We have had 
greatly to modify our doctrines of political economy 
during the course of the war, and all the things which 
many teachers told us never could be done have come 
as natural to us under war conditions which we could 
not resist, and of which we were the creatures. Where 
now is the law of supply and demand? Indeed, if the law 
of supply and demand were operating at this moment, 
there are few workmen in the country who would not 
be receiving many, many pounds more a week than they 
are. The workman is not paid to-day according to the 
demand for his labour. A very much higher obligation 
decides for him what his remuneration is to be. I have in 
mind, of course, the fact that a considerable number of 
workers, who are employed upon munition services and 
so on, are enjoying very high wages, but that is not at 
all true of the masses of the industrial population, and 
we ought not to be deceived by these rare instances 
which are quoted of men coming out of the workshop with 
£20 or ;f30. Speaking of the industrial population in the 
main, what was the outstanding economic doctrine? — the 
doctrine that the demand for labour and the volume for 
supplying that demand determined the remuneration. 
That doctrine has had to go by the board like so 



J. R. Clynes 125 

many other things that could not exist under war 
pressure. 

Then, how are we to give effect to this general work- 
shop aspiration for bringing the workman into closer 
unity with the conditions which determine that part of 
his life which is the bread-winning part, for which he has 
to turn out in the morning early and often return home 
late in the evening? There was established some time 
ago what can be described as a quite responsible com- 
mittee to report upon how better relations not only 
between employers and employed through their associa- 
tions, but in regard to employers and employed in the 
workshops, might be established. That committee issued 
the report commonly known to us now as the Whitley 
Report, of which I am quite sure more will be heard in a 
few years. The men who had to frame that report were 
drawn from the two extremes of the employers and 
trade unions. We had men with very advanced views, 
like Mr SmilHe, on the one hand, and we had quite 
powerful employers of labour, like Sir Gilbert Claughton 
and Sir WilHam Carter, on the other. I had the privilege 
of sitting on that committee, and for some months we 
laboured to frame some definite terms which might be 
accepted by those who were concerned in our recom- 
mendations. I very often hear the suggestion that people 
will have little of it because it is not ideal, not grand or 
great enough, but we have to come down to the earth 
upon these matters, and we have to recommend only 
what we feel is likely to be accepted lest our labour 
should be wasted. We must avoid, therefore, throwing 
our aims too high, and we must suggest only what prac- 
tical business men and workmen are likely seriously to 



126 Unity between Classes 

consider. Having decided to reach that conclusion, and 
feehng the sense of responsibihty which, opposed as so 
many of us were to each other, drove us to reach a 
conclusion, we expressed ourselves in these terms: "We 
are convinced that a permanent improvement in the 
relations between employers and employed must be 
founded upon something other than a cash basis. What 
is wanted is that the workpeople should have a greater 
opportunity of participating in the discussion upon an 
adjustment of those parts of industry by which they are 
most affected. For securing improvement in the relations 
between employers and employed, it is essential that 
any proposals put forward should offer to workpeople the 
means of attaining improved conditions of employment 
and a higher standard of comfort generally, and involve 
the enlistment of their active and continuous co-operatioh 
in the promotion of industry." Previously, the view was 
that the workman had nothing whatever to do with this 
phase of the management of business, and that is a 
phrase still very much used. We make no claim in this 
report that workmen should have the right to interfere 
in the higher realms of business management, in, say, 
finance, in the general higher details of organisation, in 
the extension of works, in all those more important and 
urgent matters which must come before the board of 
managers or the manager himself. These are things 
which belong properly and exclusively to those who have 
the responsibility of managing our great industries, but 
in all the other things affecting the conditions of the 
workman, the manner in which he is to be treated, hours, 
wages, conditions of employment, relations between 
section and section, and working division and working 



J. R. Clynes 127 

division, all those things which were regarded previously 
as the private monopoly of the foreman or manager 
must in future become the common concern of the work- 
men collectively, and they must have some voice in how 
these things are to be settled. The country and its 
industries, of course, may refuse to hear that voice, but 
really we have to choose between reconciling workmen 
to a given system of industry or finding workmen in 
perpetual revolt against their conditions. And it will pay 
the country to concede a great deal, not only for peace 
in the workshop but for a higher standard of peace 
generally in the whole community. The appeal that must 
be made to the workman must be followed up by asking 
him to receive it in a very different spirit from the spirit 
sometimes shewn in certain workshops. I am not here 
by any means to pour praise altogether upon the working 
classes, and I am conscious of the mistakes and wrongs 
which have sometimes been done in their names, and I 
am therefore anxious that the spirit of the workshop 
should be so tempered and altered as to be fit to receive 
and make the best use of the approaches which are to 
be made to it to participate in workshop management 
upon the lines which I have indicated. 

So this appeal which has been made by the Whitley 
committee, and which has been followed up by some other 
departments of government, is put as an appeal to the 
common-sense and reason of the men in the workshop, 
and does not rest upon any of the many agencies which 
have been employed previously in the pursuit of definite 
trade union ends. This spirit can be fostered only when 
the masses of workmen are reached by the consciousness 
that they themselves are being called upon to share in 



128 Unity between Classes 

the undertakings of which they are so important a part. 
The importance of workmen has been revealed in a most 
starthng way during the period of the war, and the war 
has shewn in many trades that recurring differences 
between capital and labour can be adjusted without 
strikes and without lock-outs if methods are provided in 
the workshop which are acceptable to both sides, and are 
made to operate fairly and satisfactorily between the 
different interests. Think how important the workman 
has become because of the war. Consider how much the 
workman is now pressed and drawn into all manner of 
services which previously he could either remain in or 
leave at his will. The war has made such a demand upon 
national industrial energy that there is no service now 
for which there is not a demand. Indeed, you have seen 
the effect in that services in the workshop include men 
who previously would have been ashamed to have had 
it known that they had ever soiled their hands at any 
toil at all, but who have been glad to get a place in the 
workshop because it was work of national importance. 
War experience has shewn us how high manual service 
stands in the grades of service which can be rendered 
for community interest. This new spirit does not appeal 
to force as a means of settling differences, nor to com- 
pulsory arbitration, nor to the authority of the State, 
nor to the power of organisation on either side. It is an 
appeal to reason, an approach to both sides to act in 
association on lines which will give freedom, self-respect, 
and security to both sides, whilst enabling each of them 
to submit to the other what it feels is best for the joint 
advancement of the trade and those engaged in it. In 
short, I would like to see inside the gates of every work- 



J. R. Clynes 129 

shop the cultivation of the same spirit in British industry 
as has been hinted at already as the first essential for 
the future development of agriculture in England. Those 
processes of calling in the individual workman through 
committees, to which I will refer briefly in a moment, 
are not intended to take the place of the great organisa- 
tions. They are to be supplementary to the Trade Unions, 
and are not intended to supplant them. 

Trades Union leadership has changed hands to a great 
extent during the past year or two, and the virtual 
leaders of the men are now men themselves employed at 
the bench and in the mine. They are exercising very 
great authority and influence over masses of their fellow 
workmen, and often the authority, and decisions, and 
advice of executives and leaders are set aside and the 
advice of the men employed in the workshop, given 
to their fellow workmen as mates, is followed. So 
with this change, due to conditions into which we 
have not time to go, there must be recognised the need 
for applying new remedies in considering this question 
of improving the relations between employer and em- 
ployed. It will not do now merely to have discussions 
between association and association. We might improve 
upon that and supplement it as I have said by having 
discussions direct in the workshop with the workmen 
themselves, who would be brought into touch at once 
with persons who were responsible for what action must 
be taken. So leadership having been to some extent 
transferred from the Trade Union to the workshop, the 
workman must be followed there and must be shewn how 
essential it is to recruit his good will and his aid in im- 
proving workshop conditions, not for the betterment of 

C.E.L. 9 



130 Unity between Classes 

the management, but as much, if not more, for his own 
betterment as a workman in the shop. This may not 
touch certain industries in the country that are non- 
organised. Some of those trades, much to our shame, in 
former years were known as sweated industries, but even 
there it is found that the workers, men and women ahke, 
are coming gradually into the trades unions, and should 
they not be in the trades unions to any great extent they 
are to be reached by other ways and means which this 
committee has developed. It is intended to apply to 
them, so as to establish the necessary machinery for better 
relations, the personnel of the Trades Boards Acts, those 
boards which, in the absence of trades unions, deal with 
the sweated conditions of thousands of workers employed 
in those sweated trades. So I have no fear myself of the 
non-organised trades being left altogether out of the 
range of the spirit to which I have referred. In addition 
to the committees there is to be in every district, it is 
proposed, a representative council, drawn from the 
employers and employed of the particular industry, and 
some scores of these councils are now being set up. In 
addition, there is to be in relation to every principal 
industry a national council, and many of us are now 
engaged in the creation of those several bodies. The 
public may not hear much about them, but they are the 
foundation upon which this structure of better relations 
is to rest, and, so far as we can spare some small margin 
of our time for those duties, considerable headway has 
been made in establishing these different organisations. 

But I attach most importance to the workshop com- 
mittees, and so I want to pursue this idea a little further. 
What are those committees to be? They would have to 



J. R. Clynes 131 

be free representative bodies, chosen by the men them- 
selves. They could be empowered to meet the manage- 
ment, possessed of a sense of responsibility, to discuss in 
their own homely way matters which would have to be 
settled between them. Indeed, we know from experience 
that many of the big trade disputes in this country have 
grown out of trifles, out of small nothings comparatively, 
which could well have been settled inside the workshop 
gates by bringing master and man together, empowered 
to discuss matters which both understand as matters of 
personal experience. The committees when created, in 
this atmosphere and spirit to which I refer, would exist 
not in rebellion against the trade unions or against the 
trade union system, or exist as being in revolt against 
the management of the works, or the employer of labour. 
The committees would be vested with responsibility for 
negotiations. They would be able to use the personal 
knowledge derived from contact with the questions 
arising day by day. They would develop a sense of in- 
dependence and a sense of just dealing, so that the 
doctrine of "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" 
should apply not only to the wages but to the work to be 
done, a thing which sometimes does not occur. These 
committees could check the driving methods of some 
persons in authority, and, whilst getting the best from 
those who are above them, they could give the best, as 
I am sure they would provided the spirit is created, from 
the workmen in return for the fairer treatment they 
would enjoy. These committees could deal not only with 
manual service and ordinary work and wage questions; 
they could develop a better use of industrial capacity 
and technical knowledge in matters of workshop life. 

9—2 



132 Unity between Classes 

But the spirit is everything, and the best desires of equit- 
able workshop management could find expression through 
those committees if they were created. The committees 
would give a chance to the many workmen who now talk 
a great deal about democracy to express that democracy 
through the persons of the workmen themselves. I fear 
there are many of our friends in the labour movement, 
as we term it, who are given freely to talking of democracy 
without clearly understanding all that is covered in that 
term. It is a term which, it is a pleasure to see, has 
recently found its way not merely into the phrases of 
statesmen, but into the King's speech itself. We are now 
speaking commonly of all the sacrifices that are being 
made, of all the blood and treasure that is being spilt, in 
order to have a wholesome democratic system of world 
government. Well, we must begin in the workshops, for 
you cannot have peace on a large scale the country over, 
or between nation and nation, unless you have peace in 
our places of employment. They are the starting points 
and there it is that your contented millions must first be 
found. If they are not happy and if they are not at ease 
in connexion with their national service, you cannot 
expect any of those larger results for which highminded 
statesmen are seeking the world over. 

Upon two main lines, in my judgment, democracy 
will require the most sane guidance and most sagacious 
advice which its leaders are capable of giving to it. It will 
not do for leaders merely to say that the future of the 
world must be decided, not by diplomats or thrones or 
Kaisers, but by the will of peoples. The will of peoples 
can find enduring and beneficial expression only when 
that will seeks social change by reasonable and calculated 



J. R. Clynes 133 

instalments, and not by any violent act of revolution. 
Peaceful voters on their way to the ballot boxes and 
properly formulated principles will in the end go further 
than fire and sword in the internal affairs of a nation. 
I say this because of the loose talk we have heard from 
many labour platforms recently of revolution and its 
benefits. Revolution may well be in any country the 
beginning and not the end of internal troubles, often 
expressed in a more painful and more violent form than 
ever. We need only look at our former great partner, 
Russia, to find full confirmation of all I have now implied. 
The red flag marches with the machine gun and the black 
cap when a certain stage of physical revolt is reached. 
The theory of new methods of life can only find rational 
application when democracy is wisely guided in taking 
slow but sure steps peacefully to turn its theories into an 
applied system, wherein the people of a nation and not 
merely a section or a class shall find their proper place 
and security for service, and find an assured existence 
under conditions of comfort for themselves and advan- 
tage to the State. Democratic leaders must tell these 
things to the people time after time if need be. They 
must repeat them so that the masses may understand 
them, because the tendency in labour has been to narrow 
the meaning of democracy. Democracy is not, and ought 
not to be, limited to those who now constitute the 
industrial population. Democracy is not a sect or a trade 
union club. Democracy is wider than the confines of the 
manual worker. Democracy should strive to reach the 
highest level of morality in doctrine and aspiration. It is 
not a class formula. It is a great and elevating faith 
which may be shared by all who believe in it. Democracy 
stands for the general progress of mankind and means 



134 Unity between Classes 

the uplifting of men, and the Hberation and unifying of 
nations. It does not mean the dominion of one class over 
another, nor the violent wresting of position or authority 
by some dramatic act of physical force, which if used 
would still leave a nation in a state of unreconciled and 
contending factions. Democracy, again, is a spirit whereby 
vast social and economic change may be effected through 
a medium approaching common consent or at least by 
the application of the political power of the people acting 
through representative institutions and resting upon 
ideas which majorities accept and understand. The spirit 
which has already accepted vast political changes can be 
made to apply to vast economic and industrial changes. 
This spirit must be cultivated by the leaders of demo- 
cracy. They have now opportunities as great as their 
responsibilities. The success of parties, in the old sense 
of the term, is a trivial thing to the success of the great 
ends to be secured. These ends will justify the use of 
any constitutional means for dethroning that form of 
power upon which privilege and the mere possession of 
wealth have rested. But democracy must not be duped 
by phrases, nor be swayed by any influence which does 
not lead to a lasting advance for the nation as a whole. 
Nor should its leaders think that fundamental and 
enduring changes in our social system can be reached by 
any short cut to which the great mass of the people have 
not been converted. Progress will be faster in the future 
if impatience and folly do not retard it. 

Having said a little with regard to the position of the 
poorer people, let me before I close respectfully address 
a few words to the richer and more favoured in the 
country. Should all rich folk in the country work? That 
is a very plain and I dare sa}^ it will be regarded in some 



J. R. Clynes 135 

places as quite an impudent question. But really, rich 
people who have never had cause in any way to earn 
their living have always been a danger to the State, just 
as they have been the greatest instance of wicked waste 
to be found in any country. There is nothing more 
melancholy, and even degrading, to a country than the 
sight of educated people who have nothing to do. Wealth 
is the fruit of service and endeavour. Work is the only 
medium by which the ravages of the war can be made 
good. Ignorance and idleness present a most pitiable 
spectacle, but the most criminal of all sights is education 
and idleness combined. Finally, let me say that whilst 
1 have g,ddressed myself mainly in terms of appeal to the 
workers, I am not unmindful at all of the difficulties of 
the great employers of labour and those covered by the 
phrase "our Captains of Industry." I know that many 
of them work very hard under the greatest and most 
trying mental pressure, and have duties and trials 
unknown even to the workmen, but with those duties 
and trials come reliefs again unknown to the workmen — 
holidays, change, and rest, and the meeting of men of 
their own class whose very company is an intellectual 
joy, so that the worst off your employer of labour as a 
human being may be he is far better off than the average 
workman. Think of the housing conditions of so many 
thousands, hundreds of thousands, of workmen, and how 
intolerable it would be for you to live under those con- 
ditions, how discontented you would be, how discontented 
the rich would be were it their fate to drag on an existence 
in some of those places which are commonly described 
by the term "houses." Why, the very waiting room of 
the employer's ordinary office is a much more cosy and 
pleasant place than the homes of many of the most 



136 Unity between Classes 

industrious workers of England. I plead that the elements 
of the human order should begin to pervade the relations 
of the workshop, that the workman should be less of a 
drudge and more of a human asset than he has been, 
that he should be brought into partnership in the under- 
taking and in the management; that incidentally he 
should have a more secure remuneration and not have 
to bear the penalties and ordeals of employment as he 
has had alone to bear them during times of trade depres- 
sion and unemployment in previous years. The human 
side of the workshop has, therefore, to be built up, and 
you cannot hope to build it up upon any foundation of 
drudgery such as the workmen in the main have had to 
live under, and, as I have said, it will pay the country 
to conciliate the men on these terms. It is a high ideal, 
but it is attainable. I believe it is attainable because 
we have seen it in another sphere of sacrifice where it has 
already been secured. The war has brought all classes 
together. In the trenches, at sea, and in all theatres of 
danger, men of all classes are now labouring shoulder to 
shoulder. There you have had a sinking of individual 
interests. There you have had a common sacrifice, a 
common endeavour for a common cause. Surely, as all 
classes have been able to unite in their sacrifice and in 
their resistance of the aggression of a foreign foe, it is, 
I hope, not asking too much that when they come back 
and take their places in peaceful pursuits again, and 
become masters, workmen, managers, and foremen in 
our enterprises and businesses, when they return from 
danger and come back to take their places amongst us, — 
surely it is not too much to hope that those who are able 
to unite abroad will be able to unite for the ends of peace 
and joy here at home. 



UNITY IN THE EMPIRE 
By F. J. Chamberlain, C.B.E. 

The word "unity" in relation to the Empire has a deeper 
meaning to-day than it had five years ago. Then it was a 
watchword, a theme for Imperial conferences and for 
speakers at demonstrations. The sanguine were sure, the 
pessimists and that great body of Britishers of moderate 
views and moderate faith regarded it as one of the things 
hoped for. 

With dramatic suddenness the event clarified the 
situation, England awoke at war. There was no time for 
preliminary councils. The supreme test of the Empire 
had been reached. It is no exaggeration to say that the 
whole world watched with eagerness for the result. It 
was in that moment that the great discovery was made. 
The British Empire stood fast. From that day until now, 
from end to end of the world has been seen an object 
lesson of unity that has justified the sanguine, and been 
an inspiration to the Allies. That revelation has been 
more inspiring because the world is aware that it is in 
spite of the most sinister and subtle campaign against it, 
planned and brilliantly executed by an enemy under the 
cloak of friendship. I do not forget the tragic circum- 
stances of one small nation within the Empire. But 
Ireland has given more evidence of her faithfulness to 
Empire on the fields of France and Flanders than of her 
treachery at home, and to-day we have more reason to 



138 Unity in the Empire 

count her ours than has the enemy. Examine the position 
in cold blood, if you can, and you are still aware of a 
substantial, solid, and effective unity running round the 
Empire, binding it in one as with a girdle of scarlet and 
gold. 

The war is not responsible for the unity ; it has only 
discovered or uncovered it. The storm does not establish 
foundations; it may reveal them. A century of building 
has created the structure that the storm has failed to 
destroy. 

The British Empire is a successful experiment on the 
lines of the longed-for League of Nations. The race 
contains no more diverse elements than are found within 
its borders; one-third of the land surface of the world, 
and one-fifth of the inhabitants, have been held together 
in a living federation and have been kept until this day. 
Upon our generation rests the awful and splendid 
responsibility of proving to a questioning world that this 
unity can be made permanent, and of illustrating how a 
still larger unity may be achieved. 

You will forgive one or two homely pictures of our 
unity that cannot fail to strike the imagination. It has 
been our privilege to meet thousands of men from the 
Overseas Dominions. How many times have boys, whose 
forefathers emigrated from England or Scotland, who 
were themselves born in Australia, or on the Western 
plains of Canada, said, "I have been wanting to come 
home all my life"? These islands are the "home" of the 
Empire, and there is no more wonderful word in the 
language. 

Or think of Botha and Smuts, within the memory 
almost of the youngest of us, fighting with all their heart 



F. J. Chamberlain 139 

and mind against the Empire, and, to-day, dominant 
personalities proclaiming their loyalty, and proving it in 
unrivalled service. 

Or picture, if you can, young India, pouring out her 
life-blood with pride and ready sacrifice, in France, in 
Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, for the "British Raj." The 
most moving scene in the history of the British Commons 
was on that evening in 1915, when the princes of India 
stood amidst the representatives of the people of the 
homelands and paid their homage. 

How much such things mean will depend on the vision 
of those who hear them ; but they have in them the stuff 
that holds the future. 

This ghastly war, not of our choosing, has transferred 
the seats of learning for young Britain from their peaceful 
sites to the battlefield. If the object of education is the 
cultivation of the power of thought and observation, the 
kindling of imagination, and the extension of knowledge ; 
then "over there" is a University set in full array, with 
ghostly as well as human tutors, a curriculum without 
precedent, and such a body of undergraduates as Cam- 
bridge or Oxford might covet. 

It is not for nothing, as regards the Empire, that your 
sons, the children of the East End, and the boys of 
Canada, Australasia, and South Africa, are meeting and 
minghng with Gurkha and Sikh, and with each other. 
They are sharing a common discipline, a common adven- 
ture, making sacrifice together. They are seeing each 
other with eyes from which the scales are falling, and 
knowledge and understanding are growing out of their 
contact. The farthest reaches of Empire have been 
brought nearer to the Empire's heart by this brotherhood 



140 Unity in the Empire 

in arms, and the barriers between classes have been 
lowered until a man can step across them without climb- 
ing. The distance between East and West has been 
immeasurably shortened, whether we are thinking in 
terms of London, or of the Empire. 

In our consideration of this whole subject we are to take 
the Christian standpoint. To us, the words "Thy Kingdom 
come on earth as it is in Heaven," on Divine lips were 
more than a pious wish. They were a great intention, the 
expression of age-long purpose. We believe that the gains 
of the centuries — the harvest of the past which is worth 
conserving — have been secured by moral and spiritual 
conquest, rather than by military or political achieve- 
ment. There may be elements in our present forms of 
unity which we may well allow to go by the board. The 
things that make for permanence will abide not only 
with an enlightened statesmanship, but with a growing 
understanding, an ever broadening interpretation of 
Christian teaching about 

The Kingdom of God on earth, 
The Universal Fatherhood of God, and 
The brotherhood of man, 
leading the nation to see that the knowledge of God and 
of His Christ is the rightful inheritance of every son of 
the Empire. 

As these great ideals of social life have been interpreted 
in the life of either sovereign peoples or subject peoples, 
so, we believe, and only so, have bonds been forged that 
can be trusted to stand the strain which time and 
changing condition and circumstances impose. 

Unity, even the Empire itself ultimately, depends, as 
we believe, on a broad-based statesmanship, carrying up 



F. J. Chamberlain 141 

the main principles of our Government to their highest 
power in action, and, constantly throughout the Empire, 
mediating those doctrines to the peoples concerned as 
they are able to bear them, with ever-extending inspira- 
tion and encouragement to growth and development. 

Our Imperial aims are neither antagonistic to nor 
inconsistent with our Christian programme. That should 
constitute' a challenge to the Christian Churches, and is 
in itself a matter for high and solemn pride. The war has 
cleared the air. As stated during this period, the ideal of 
a federation of nations, free, independent, and at the 
same time interdependent, each working out its national 
destiny, each contributing, in terms of opportunity, to 
the well-being of the whole, bringing to bear on Imperial 
matters the heart, brain, will of the whole, gives us a 
picture of a Commonwealth in advance of any contempo- 
rary political programme, with the one conspicuous 
exception of that of the United States of America, between 
whom and ourselves is being established a Unity which 
may well be more valuable to the world at large and to 
ourselves than any formal Union. 

Here, as we see it, is our opportunity. The Christian 
forces of the Empire have the onus of maintaining the 
national outlook at this high level. Our faith, our audacity, 
our leadership will be needed if lesser counsels are to have 
no chance of prevailing. There must be no swing of the 
pendulum back to smaller views. 

With the coming of Peace, the temptation to the 
Nation to take off its armour, to come down from the 
pedestal, to revert to pre-war conditions, to re-act in self- 
indulgence from the strain of war, or to let materialism 
defeat ideahsm, will be well-nigh overwhelming. To give 



142 Unity in the Empire 

way to that temptation will be to rob victory of any 
permanent values. It will be a poor thing to have taught 
Germany her lesson, if we fail to learn our own. 

We see no hope of successful resistance of that tempta- 
tion apart from the mobilisation of the Christian forces 
within the Empire into an army committed to the sacred 
task of making the conscience of the Nation effectively 
Christian, leading the way in bringing about a closer 
approximation between the politics of the State and the 
programme of the Kingdom of God, and proclaiming that 
Kingdom at hand. 

If we are agreed so far it behoves us to look for the 
practical implications of the position. These islands are 
still the heart and home of the Empire. This was the 
rock whence its younger peoples were hewn. Our nation 
has produced the men and the machinery that govern 
our commonwealth. The lonely places, farthest removed 
from us, will be peopled largely by and through the 
work of children of the Old Country. There, wherever 
her children go, is England. 

England is a treasure house, where the very stones are 
eloquent. Her history, her buildings, her national and 
civic life, her denominations and movements are all of 
them of vital interest to her children. It is a place of 
pilgrimage and remembrance. It is more. They find here 
the mature growths from which their institutions have 
sprung. They love our historic places, they love our 
crowded cities, they love our seashores and our quiet 
country-side, for everywhere they go they find not only 
the story of our past, but that of their own. This is their 
spiritual home. Our art, our literature, our movements 
are parts of a common inheritance, and it is the pride of 



F. J. Chamberlain 143 

the Motherland that her children have never outgrown 
their love of the old home, their veneration for its sanc- 
tions and restraints, and that on their own homesteads 
they have reproduced in new settings and often in fresh 
forms so much that is native here. 

One would like to see a larger share in this priceless 
inheritance offered to our peoples oversea. Think for one 
moment of our great Cathedrals, unique and wonderful. 
They can never be reproduced. They might be copied; 
but Canterbury and Westminster, Lincoln and Durham, 
York and the rest would still remain all that they are to 
us and to them. You cannot transplant history. In the 
homeland we are but trustees of these treasures, and we 
ought to make them the home and centre of our Imperial 
Christianity. In every one of them the priests of the 
Church in the Overseas lands should not only be seen 
but heard. Is there no room in Cathedral Chapters for 
Overseas representatives, so that in our daily services 
in a new and living way we may be linked together in 
sacrament, praise and prayer, and in the proclamation of 
Christian truth? One Canonry for each historic building 
would mean more to Unity than many resolutions at 
Congress. Perhaps that is as far as one ought to go in 
suggestion, but there are other splendid possibihties that 
one would love to discuss. No one thinking of Unity in 
the Empire can fail to rejoice in the growing desire 
manifest among Christian Denominations for Unity. I 
will not trench on another's subject beyond saying that 
the way to Union is Unity, and that it would be tragic 
if in these momentous days any stone was left unturned 
that would lead to better knowledge, deeper understanding 
and sympathy between those who name the Name that 



144 Unity in the Empire 

is above every name. And our people overseas have much 
to teach us in this matter. Over great areas of social 
opportunity and service the Catholic Church may act 
unitedly and must do so, if she is to enter on offensive 
warfare and not stand for another generation on the 
defensive. The war has made a difference here. Men, who 
in the conventional days of peace rarely met, have 
joined hands in service. Catholic and Protestant, Church- 
man and Free Churchman, have found joy in fellowship. 
That does not mean that differences have disappeared, it 
means that, recognising and estimating their differences, 
it has been possible to establish a basis of co-operation, 
in knowledge, understanding, and sympathy, and to 
recognise in one another the hall-mark of Christian faith 
and character. Is this to be a war measure only? or is it 
to be one of the great gains to be carried over into the 
days ahead? 

One other question clamours for treatment: the pro- 
blem of the evangelisation of the Empire. Christianity 
must be given its chance in every corner of the Empire. 
There may be divergent opinions as to the methods to 
be used, but if Christianity contains in its gospel the 
pearl of great price, there can be no two opinions as to 
the obligation that rests on us to bring to the nations 
federated with us this supreme gift. Nothing can release 
us from that responsibility. To postpone the presentation 
of the Christian gospel for any of the time-honoured 
excuses : 

(i) our pre-occupation in matters of more urgent 
importance elsewhere,|^| 

(2) any fear of the effects of Christianity on our political 
or commercial interests. 



F. J. Chamberlain 145 

(3) the desire to live down prejudice and establish 
confidence, 

(4) the preparation of a people's mind by education 
before introducing a new religion, 

— any one of these is treachery to the All- Father and to 
the family of man, and a vital praeparatio evangelica is 
being made. Let me illustrate. 

It happened in a great marquee in France. On a summer 
evening in 1916 the place was crowded with Indians. 
There was a group playing Indian card games, there was 
a crowd round a gramophone with Indian records, at the 
writing tables with great torment of spirit men were 
writing to their homes. At the counter foods they loved 
were being provided. Against one of the poles of the 
marquee stood a stately Indian of some rank. He had 
been seen there often before. He rarely spoke but seemed 
intensely interested. On this particular night the time 
arrived for the closing of the tent. The little groups 
gradually disappeared and the tent curtains were being 
replaced when the leader of the work found himself 
addressed by the Indian : 

Why do you serve us in this way ? You are not here by Govern- 
ment orders. You come when you Uke and you go when you like. 
There is only one reUgion on earth that would lead its servants to 
serve in this way, Christianity. I have been watching you men, 
and I have come to the conclusion that Christianity will fit the 
East as it can never fit the West. When the war is over I want 
you to send one of your men to my village. We are all Hindus, but 
my people will do what I tell them. 

One of the ghastly tragedies of the war is that two 
great nations nominally Christian are at each other's 
throats. In the world's eyes Christian civilisation has 
broken down. We know better, but our explanations will 

C. E.L. 10 



146 Unity in the Empire 

not carry far enough to correct the impression. Our 
defence must be an offensive. 

It is certainly within the truth to say that we have not 
yet seen what Christianity can do for a community or a 
nation where, as I put it before, "it is given a chance." 
May it not be that in the Providence of God the first 
great revelation of what Christianity can do for a nation 
will be seen in one of the lands that have come under the 
Flag, and among a people living under less complex 
conditions than ourselves? If that is a possibility we 
ought to see that wherever the Flag flies, there comes, 
with the unfurling of the Flag, the Gospel of Christ. 

This is directly in the interest of unity, and many 
problems that have so far remained insoluble to our 
statesmen might discover the solution in Christian 
leadership. 

I shall be pardoned I know for suggesting that the 
highest purposes of unity may be served by the extension 
and development throughout the Empire of such inter- 
national organisations as the Student Christian Move- 
ment, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., and, used at its 
highest values, the Boy Scout Movement. There are 
others, but these are typical. They are established move- 
ments built up on definite principles capable of universal 
application, and yet each of them able to develop its 
organisation on lines that recognise national psychology 
and character. Each of them may become and aims at 
becoming indigenous everywhere, giving freedom of 
method and action and free play to the moral and 
intellectual activities of the people concerned, while 
they have certain essential elements that are universally 
characteristic of them. In addition, they give large 



F. J. Chamberlain 147 

numbers of Christian people an opportunity of expressing 
their unity in service of the right kind. 

What was said about the Cathedrals is equally true of our 
two ancient Universities. Mr Fisher's Education Bill may 
well mean more for Imperial unity than almost any other 
single factor. It will mean an ever increasing number of 
men to whom "Cambridge" and "Oxford" will be magic 
words. If our view of culture is broad enough we shall 
see to it that these two Universities become increasingly 
places where the children of the Empire who are fit to 
graduate in them shall not lack the opportunity of doing 
so. Because these ancient foundations link with the past, 
because of all they may mean to the present and to the 
future, the way to them should be made broad enough 
to admit the living stream of Greater Britain's children, 
who by dint of gifts and industry have proved their 
fitness to meet their peers in these delectable cities, where 
the very air breathes the romance of British culture. 
Their right of entry ought not to be won by the bene- 
factions of private citizens, though all who love knowledge 
are grateful enough for these, but should be theirs by 
their citizenship in the Empire and their own tested 
fitness. 

Nothing again is more hopeful in the present situation 
than the manifest desire, widely felt and expressed, that 
the old class-antagonisms should never be revived. Surely 
this is the strategic moment in which we may make the 
War once more contribute to a better state of things. 
Our politicians are awake to the need and are inventing 
every kind of machinery for bringing Capital and Labour 
together in Council Chambers as co-partners in the Com- 
merce of the Empire. But there are sinister forces also 

10 — 2 



148 Unity in the Empire 

at work, and this machinery can only run if it is con- 
trolled by men of resolute good will. 

The War has been a great bridge-builder linking up in 
the fellowship of discipline and sacrifice people between 
whom chasms yawned before. There are knowledge and 
understanding and sympathy to-day amongst us. Yet 
many of us are convinced that no purely political 
machinery can be made effective in achieving so great 
a task as the making permanent of this new and better 
condition. We need a new and abiding spirit of concilia- 
tion, a deeper determination than political action can 
produce, that things shall not relapse, that the forces of 
re-action shall not triumph. The one hope of carrying 
over into permanence this new understanding and 
appreciation lies in the nation becoming impregnated 
with those spacious spiritual ideals that the Churches 
together represent. Nothing is impossible to faith, and 
faith in God and man will be kept astretch in the disci- 
pline that will be demanded of us all, in the breaking 
down of false barriers that have grown up through the 
years and the destruction of long-lived prejudices that 
will die hard. 

The Empire itself is a unity. It is not easy for English 
people to realise all that is implied here. My great name- 
sake urged us in this country to "think Imperially." 
Another voice asks us "What do they know of England 
who only England know? " but it is hard for us to think 
except in terms of England. For example, I have referred 
to this country as the great treasure house of the Empire's 
history, and to the care and devotion shewn by our 
kinsmen from Overseas in their study of our country 
and its institutions. All of us realise how right that is. 



F. J. Chamberlain 149 

but ought we not to reciprocate their devotion and regard, 
by much more intense interest and study of their Hfe 
and the developments of their institutions? 

Our unity demands this wider culture, this reciprocity. 
The Motherland must not only teach, she must be pre- 
pared to learn. She may lead, but she must be prepared 
to follow. We have much to contribute, but in Religion, 
in political and social ideals, and in commerce there is 
much we need to receive. 

If our land is the great treasure house, are not these 
other lands great laboratories where we might see, if we 
would only look, how some of our accepted ideas, and 
notions, and watchwords are tested in a larger arena? 

Are we so sure of ourselves that we are prepared to 
hold on to our own experience as the final test of the 
truth and value of our theories? Or are we big enough 
in the light of Imperial experience to revise our judgment, 
to sift our theories, and to go forward carrying those 
which stand the test of the wider arena, and being pre- 
pared to surrender those which only seemed right and 
proper in the conventional setting of these small islands? 

In conclusion, the Empire has come to power and 
unity on certain great principles. Our Imperial ideals 
have been evolved out of experience all over the world, 
and with all kinds of people, under the guidance of dis- 
tinguished leaders of many-sided gifts. In an Empire 
so diverse in its constituent parts, including peoples at 
varied stages of development, it is impossible that those 
ideals should be everywhere expressed at their highest 
power. In many places our methods of government must 
be tentative, but everywhere they must be progressive, 
placing upon subject peoples the burden of government 



150 Unity in the Empire 

as rapidly as they are able to bear it, providing every 
inspiration that can call them upwards and onwards. 
Our tentative methods must never be allowed to become 
permanent. We may be tutors, we must never become 
tyrants. We may lead, direct, even control, but we may 
never be content until our people are free, self-governing, 
rejoicing in the liberty that enables them to choose 
whole-heartedly to remain in that Commonwealth of free 
peoples we call the Empire. Along this path lie per- 
manence and closer unity. In our Imperial destiny it is 
the part of those who would be the greatest to become the 
servants of all. 

Thank God for all who have laboured in this spirit to 
build our goodly heritage. 



UNITY BETWEEN NATIONS 

By the Rev. J. H. B. Masterman, M.A. 

In the previous lectures of this course you have been 
considering the problem of home reunion. My task to-day 
is to remind you of the fact that beyond the reunion of 
the Churches at home there lies the larger problem of 
the realisation of the Christian ideal of a universal 
brotherhood. How can this ideal be realised in a world 
divided into nations? I am going to treat the subject 
historically; firstly because I find myself incapable of 
treating it in any other way, and secondly because you 
can only build securely if you build on the foundation 
of the historic past. The State may ignore the lessons of 
the past, the Church can never do so. 

How can we deal with the apparent antagonism 
between the centrifugal force of nationality and the 
centripetal force of the Catholic ideal? There are two 
possible answers that we cannot accept. It is possible for 
religion to set itself against the development of national 
life, and claim that a world-religion must find expression 
in a world-state. That is the mediaeval answer. 

Or it is possible for religion to become subordinate to 
nationality at the cost of losing the note of Catholicity, 
so that the consecration of national life may seem a 
nobler task than the gathering of humanity into con- 
scious fellowship in one great society. This is the modern 
answer. 



152 Unity between Nations 

With neither of these solutions can we be satisfied. 
The existence of nations as units of pohtical self-con- 
sciousness within the larger life of humanity does, we 
believe, minister to the fulfilment of the purpose of God. 
Whatever may be the case hereafter, the establishment 
of a world-state, at the present stage in the evolution of 
human institutions, would mean the impoverishment of 
the life of humanity. Yet a Church that is merely national 
or imperial has missed the true significance of its mission. 

At the beginning of the Christian era, the greatest 
attempt ever made to gather all peoples into a universal 
society was actually in progress. The Roman Empire was 
founded on the basis of a common administrative system, 
and a common law — the jus gentium. It needed a common 
religion. The effort to supply this passes through three 
stages. The earliest of these is the stage of universal 
toleration which was made possible by polytheism. A 
second stage soon follows. The various religions of the 
Empire overflow one another's frontier-lines and a 
synthesis begins, leading to the Stoic idea of the universal 
truth expressed in many forms. But the popular mind 
was unable to rise to this high conception, and the third 
stage begins towards the end of the first century in the 
formal adoption of the worship of the Emperor as the 
religious expression of the unity of the Empire. It was 
the opposition of the Christian Church that did most to 
bring to naught this effort to give a religious foundation 
to the unity of the Empire, and the attempt of Constan- 
tine and Theodosius to make Christianity an Imperial 
religion came too late to save the Empire from dis- 
integration. 

For the unity of the Christian Church had been under- 



J. H. B. Masterman 153 

mined. When Christianity shook itself free from the 
shackles of Jewish nationalism, it came under the influ- 
ence of Greek thought. The theology and language of the 
early Church were Greek. Even in Rome the Church was 
for at least two centuries "a Greek colony." Hence the 
growth of Christianity was slow in those western parts of 
the Empire that had not come under the influence of 
Greek culture — Gaul, Britain, Spain, North Africa. Latin 
Christianity found its centre in North Africa, where 
Roman culture had imposed itself on the hard, cruel 
Carthaginian world. It is Carthage, not Athens, that 
gives to Tertullian his harsh intolerance and to St 
Augustine his stern determinism. So the way was pre- 
pared for what I regard as the supreme tragedy of 
history — the falling apart of Eastern and Western 
Christianity. Then, in the West, the unity of the Church 
is broken by the conversion of the Teutonic peoples to 
Arianism, so that the contest between the dying Empire 
in the West and the tribes pressing on its frontiers is 
embittered by religious antagonism. The sword of Clovis 
secured the victory of orthodoxy, but at what a cost ! 

When the storm subsides, there emerges the august 
conception of the Holy Roman Empire. For the noblest 
expression of the ideal of a universal Christian Empire, 
read Dante's De Monarchia. The history of the Holy 
Roman Empire is too large a subject to enter upon. It is 
important to remember that the struggles between the 
Popes and the Emperors that fill so large a space of 
mediaeval history were not struggles between Church 
and State. Western Europe was conceived of as one 
Christian Society — an attempt to realise the City of God 
of St Augustine's great treatise — and the question at 

10—5 



154 Unity between Nations 

issue was whether the Pope or the Emperor was to be 
regarded as the supreme head of this great society. 

The unity of Western Christendom found a crude, but 
real, expression in the Crusades, and it is significant that 
the dechne of the crusading impulse coincides in time 
with the rise of national feeling in the two western states, 
England and France. What was to be the attitude of 
the Catholic Church towards this new national instinct? 
In the 14th and 15th centuries the question becomes 
increasingly urgent, and the Council of Constance may 
be regarded as the last sincere effort to find an answer. 
The answer suggested there, to which the 'English Church 
still adheres, was the recognition of a General Council 
of the Church as the supreme spiritual authority. Such 
a General Council might gather the glory and honour 
of the nations into the City of God, and might even, it 
was hoped, restore the broken unity between East and 
West. How the Council failed, how Constantinople was 
left to its fate, how a Papacy growing more and more 
Italian in its interests brought to a head the long- 
simmering revolt of the nations — all this you know. The 
Reformation was, in part, a struggle of the nations to 
give religious expression to their national life. The 
threefold bond that had held together the Church of the 
West — the bond of common language, law and cere- 
monial — was broken. 

At the threshold of the new order stand the figures of 
Luther and Machiavelli, as champions of the supremacy 
of the State. True, Luther thinks of the State as a 
Christian society, while Machiavelli is the father of the 
modern German doctrine of the non-moral character of 
state action. But the Augsburg compromise, cujus regio, 



J. H. B. Masterman 155 

ejus religio, was a frank subordination of the Church to 
secular authority. The Tudor sovereigns adopted the 
doctrine with alacrity, and imposed on the Church of 
England a subjection to secular authority from which it 
has not yet been able to disentangle itself. 

While Lutheranism tended to treat religion as a 
department of the State, Calvinism claimed for the 
Church an authority that threatened the very existence 
of the State. Calvinism represents the second attempt to 
give practical expression to St Augustine's Civitas Dei, 
as the Holy Roman Empire was the first. It failed, in 
part, because it lost its catholic character, and became 
(as, for example, in Scotland) intensely national. The 
disintegration of the Catholic Church in the West was 
helped by two influences. The first was the return to the 
standards and ideals of the Old Testament. The appeal 
of the reformers to Holy Scripture involved the elevation 
of the Old Testament to the same level of authority as 
the New. The crude nationahsm of Judaism obscured the 
Christian idea of a universal brotherhood — St Paul's 
secret hidden from the foundation of the world, to be 
revealed in the fulness of time in the Christian gospel. 
Even now we hardly realise how largely our ideas of 
religion are derived from the imperfect moral standards 
of the Old Testament. The other influence was the 
identification of the Papacy with the Antichrist of 
the Book of Revelation — the Protestant answer to the 
Roman excommunication of heretics. The idea of a 
common Christianity deeper than all national anta- 
gonisms hardly existed in the Europe of the later half 
of the i6th century. 

Nearly a century of wars of religion was followed by 



156 Unity between Nations 

seventy years of war in which the national idea played 
the leading part. The internationalism of the i8th 
century was a reaction against both religion and natio- 
nality. The Napoleonic struggle, and the Romantic 
revival, with its appeal to the past, re-awakened the 
national instinct. In France, Spain, Russia, Prussia, and 
Eastern Europe, national self-consciousness was stirred 
into life. In Russia and Spain, and among the Balkan 
peoples, this national awakening took a definitely 
religious character. But it was Italy that produced the 
one thinker to whom the real significance of nationality 
was revealed. Mazzini recognised, more clearly than any 
other political teacher of the time, how NationaHsm 
founded on religion might lead to the brotherhood of 
nations in a world "made safe for democracy." The 
last century has been an epoch of exaggerated national 
self -consciousness. Against the aggressive tendencies of 
the greater nations, the smaller nations strove to protect 
themselves. Italy, Poland, Bohemia, Serbia, Greece, 
strove with varying degrees of success to achieve national 
self-expression. Nation strove with nation in a series of 
contests, of which the present war is the culmination. 

The influence of Christianity was impotent to prevent 
war; though it was able to do something to restrain its 
worst excesses. Where the centrifugal force of nationality 
comes into opposition to the centripetal force of the 
Christian ideal, it is generally the former that wins. How 
is this impotence to be accounted for? Four reasons at 
least maybe noted, (i) The "inwardness " of Lutheranism, 
combined with the cynicism of the Machiavelhan doctrine 
of the non-moral character of public policy led, especially 
in Germany, to an entire disregard of the principles of 



J. H. B. Masterman 157 

Christianity in the pubhc policy of the State. Nations did 
not even profess to be guided by Christian principles in 
their dealings with each other. The noble declaration of 
Alexander I remained a piece of "sublime nonsense" to 
statesmen like Metternich and Castlereagh, and their 
successors. (2) The internal life of the nations was, and 
is, only partially Christianised. Nations cannot regulate 
their external policy on Christian principles unless those 
principles are accepted as authoritative in their internal 
affairs. (3) The influence of Christianity has been 
hindered, to a degree difficult to exaggerate, by the 
unhappy divisions that, especially in England and in the 
United States, have made it impossible for the Church 
to speak with a united voice. (4) The idea of the 
Sovereignty of the State and its supreme claim on the 
life of the individual, with which Dr Figgis has dealt with 
illuminating insight in his Churches in the Modern State, 
has prevented the idea of the Churches as local expres- 
sions of a universal society from exercising the corrective 
influence that it ought to exercise on the over-emphasis 
of State independence. 

The State is only one of the various forms in which 
national life expresses itself. It is the nation organised 
for self -protect ion. And wherever self -protection becomes 
the supreme need, the State, like Aaron's rod, swallows 
all the rest. But in many directions, the world has 
become, or is becoming, international. Science and 
philosophy, and, to a lesser degree, theology and art, 
have become the common possession of all civilised 
nations. The effort to make commerce the expression of 
international fellowship, with which the name of Cobden 
is associated, failed, largely as the result of the German 



158 Unity between Nations 

policy of high tariffs, but its defeat is only temporary, 
and the commercial interdependence of nations will 
reassert its influence when the present phase of inter- 
national strife is over. The function of the Church is 
to express the common life and interests of nations, as 
the State expresses the distinctive character of each. 
So the Church holds to the four universal things — the 
authority of Holy Scripture; the Creeds; the two Sacra- 
ments, and the historic episcopate. We believe that the 
retention of the historic Episcopate is essential to the 
maintenance of the Catholic ideal of the Church. For the 
bishop is the link between the local and the universal 
Church; the representative and guardian of the Catholic 
ideal in the life of the local community; and the repre- 
sentative of the local community in the counsels of the 
Catholic Church. I have often wished that at least one 
bishop from some other Church than our own could be 
associated with the consecration of all bishops of the 
Anglican Church. For by such association we should 
bring into clearer prominence the fact that the historic 
episcopate is more than a national institution. 

So we reach the final question : What can the Churches 
do to promote the unity of the nations? 

An invitation was recently issued by the Archbishop of 
Upsala for a conference of representatives of the Christian 
Churches, to reassert, even in this day of disunion, the 
essential unity of the Body of Christ. For various reasons, 
such a conference at the present juncture seems imprac- 
ticable, but the time may come when, side by side with 
a Congress of the nations, a gathering of representatives 
of the Churches may be called together to reinforce, by 
its witness, the idea of international fellowship. 



J. H. B, Masterman 159 

For a League of Churches might well prepare the way 
for a League of Nations. Such a League of Churches 
would naturally find expression in a permanent Advisory 
Council — a kind of ecclesiastical Hague tribunal. Histori- 
cal antagonisms seem to preclude the selection of Rome 
or Constantinople as the place of meeting of this Council. 
Surely there is no other place so suited for the purpose 
as Jerusalem. Here the appointed representatives of all 
the Churches, living in constant intercourse with one 
another, might draw together the severed parts of the 
One Body, till the glory and honour of the nations find, 
even in the earthly Jerusalem, their natural centre and 
home. Thus, and thus only, can the spiritual foundation 
for a League of Nations be well and truly laid. 

Two things are involved in any such scheme for a 
League of Churches. No one Church must claim a para- 
mount position or demand submission as the price of 
fellowship ; and all excommunications of one Church by 
another must be swept away. 

Christ did not come to destroy the local loyalties that 
lift human life out of selfish isolation. These loyalties 
only become anti-Christian when they become exclusive. 
The early loyalty of primitive man to his family or clan 
was deemed to involve a normal condition of antagonism 
to neighbouring families or clans. Turn a page of history, 
and tribal loyalty has become civic loyalty. But civic 
loyalty, as in the cities of Greece or Italy or Flanders, 
involves intermittent hostility with neighbouring cities. 
Then civic loyalty passes into national loyalty, and again 
patriotism expresses itself in distrust and antipathy to 
other nations. And this will also be so till we see that all 
these local loyalties rest on the foundation of a deeper 



i6o Unity between Nations 

loyalty to the Divine ideal of universal fellowship that 
found its supreme expression in the Incarnation and its 
justification in the truth that God so loved the world. 

To the Christian man national life can never be an end 
in itself but always a means to an end beyond itself. 
A nation exists to serve the cause of humanity ; by what 
it gives, not by what it gets, will its worth be estimated 
at the judgment-bar of God. 

"Whoso loveth father or mother more than me is not 
worthy of me " must have seemed a hard saying to those 
to whom it was first spoken; and "whoso loveth city or 
fatherland more than me is not worthy of me" may seem 
a hard saying to us to-day; yet nothing less than this is 
involved in our pledge of loyalty to Christ. Christian 
patriotism never found more passionate expression than 
in St Paul's wish that he might be anathema for the sake 
of his nation ; yet passionately as he loved his own people, 
he loved with a deeper passion the Catholic Church within 
which there was neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian, 
Scythian, bond nor free. It is because the idea of the 
Catholic Church has become to the majority of Christian 
people a matter of intellectual assent rather than of 
passionate conviction that the Church seems impotent in 
international affairs. 

The last four centuries of European history have had 
as their special characteristic the development of nations. 
It may be that after this war we shall pass into a new 
era. The special feature of the period now closing has 
been the insecurity of national life. Menaced with con- 
stant danger, every nation has tended to develop an ex- 
aggerated self-consciousness that was liable to become 
inflamed and over-sensitive. If adequate security can be 



J H. B. Masterman i6i 

provided, by a League of Nations, or in some other way, 
for the free development of the national life of every 
nation, the senseless over-emphasis of nationality from 
which the past has suffered will no longer hinder the 
growth of a true Internationalism. I believe that the 
real alternative lies not between Nationality and Inter- 
nationalism but between an Internationalism founded, 
like that of the i8th century, on non-Christian culture 
and materialism, and an Internationalism founded on the 
consecration of all the local loyalties that bind a man 
to family, city and nation, lifting him through local 
spheres of service to the service of the whole human race 
for whom Christ died. The tree whose leaves are for the 
healing of the nations grows only in the City of God. The 
Christian forces in the world are impotent to guide the 
future, because they are entangled in the present. Yet it 
is in the Holy Catholic Church that the one hope for 
humanity lies. It may be that that hope will never be 
realised; that the Holy Catholic Church is destined to 
remain to the end an unachieved ideal. But it is by 
unachieved ideals that men and nations live; and what 
matters most for every Christian man is that he should 
keep the Catholic mind and heart that reach out through 
home and city and country to all mankind, and rejoice 
that every man has an equal place in the impartial love 
of God. 



CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY 

J. B. PEACE, M.A., 
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